Beheaded, Crucified, Impaled or Hanged?

Not every dream in the Joseph story had a happy ending. The dream of Pharaoh’s chief baker, one of two court officials imprisoned with Joseph, had a particularly disturbing ending—as did the baker. But the baker’s true fate remains clouded behind centuries of uncertain Bible translation.

While Joseph was in Pharaoh’s prison, two of his fellow inmates—Pharaoh’s chief cupbearer and Pharaoh’s chief baker—had 051strange dreams, which Joseph interpreted for them, as recorded in Genesis 40. The cupbearer, sleeping on the left in the mosaic at left, dreamed that he saw a grapevine sprout three branches, which budded, blossomed and yielded ripe fruit. He reached out, plucked the grapes, pressed them into Pharaoh’s cup and presented the cup to Pharaoh. Joseph told him that the three branches represented the three days that would pass before Pharaoh, during his birthday celebration, would lift up the cupbearer’s head¹ and restore him to his former position. In transliterated Hebrew, Joseph’s prediction reads, “B’od shloshet yamim yisah Pharo et roshecha vahasiv cha al kanecha” (Genesis 40:13).