Page:Legends of Old Testament Characters.djvu/242

220 opposed me; and now love is turned to hate, and I shall cast him into prison."

She was as good as her word, and thus it fell out that Joseph was placed in the king's prison. But God would not suffer the innocent to be punished. He illumined his cell with a celestial light, made a fountain spring up in the midst of it, and a fruit-bearing tree to grow before the door.

Joseph was five years in prison, and then the King of the Greeks, who was warring against Egypt, sent an ambassador to Rajjan desiring peace. But his true purpose was to throw him off his guard, that he might with treachery destroy him. The ambassador sought the advice of an old Greek woman who had long lived in Egypt. She said, "I know of only one way of accomplishing what you desire, and that is to bribe the butler or the baker of the king to poison him; but it would be better to put the drug in the wine than in the bread."

The ambassador then bribed the chief baker with much gold, and he promised to put poison in Pharaoh's meat. After that he told the old woman that one of the two she had named to him had been persuaded to destroy the king.

Then the ambassador returned, and when he was gone, the woman disclosed all to Pharaoh, and she said, "Either the butler or the baker has taken a bribe to poison thee, O king." Thereupon the king cast both into prison, till it should be made manifest which was guilty. Now the name of the baker was Mohlib, and that of the butler was Kamra.

After they had been in prison some time, they had dreams; and they told their dreams to Joseph.

The chief butler said, "I saw in my dream, and, behold, a vine was before me. And in the vine were three branches; and as it sprouted it brought forth buds, and immediately they ripened into clusters, and became grapes. And I saw till they gave the cup of Pharaoh into my hand, and I took the grapes and squeezed them into Pharaoh's cup, and I gave the cup into Pharaoh's hand." And Joseph said to him, "This is the interpretation of the dream. The three branches are the three Fathers of the world, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whose children are to be enslaved in Egypt in clay and brickwork, and in all labours of the face of the field; but afterward shall they be delivered by the