19 September 2022 draft-bible
1. cup-bearer. Hebrew mašqeh. Throughout the rest of this chapter, WEB translates this term as “cup bearer”, but in this verse reads “butler”. I am using “cup-bearer” throughout for consistency, and in agreement with the glosses given by DCH and HALOT.
4. for some time. Literally, “days”. The WEB reads “many days”, but the Hebrew text does not say “many”. When one considers the range of ways that the Hebrew Bible uses the term “days” – see, for example, various uses in BDB – it seems to me that one should follow many other translators in reading this as some indefinite period of time, and not add any indication that it was long or short. Translations which indicate some indefinite period include KJV, NKJV, NIV, NAB, NET, ASV, JPS (1917), NASB, ESV, NRSV. It is also worth noting that the NHEB corrects the WEB’s “many days” to “some time”.
5. each dream with its own interpretation. Hebrew ʾiš kᵉfitron halomo, which the WEB renders as “each man according to the interpretation of his own dream”. This is very archaic English, to the point of likely being unintelligible to many readers, so I think a little bit of paraphrasing is in order to make the point of the Hebrew comprehensible: that these were two different dreams with two different interpretations.
17. were eating. Hebrew ʿokel, a participle.
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