Ibn Abbas said: Joseph stumbled three times: when he inclined toward her, and was therefore imprisoned; when he said, “Mention me to your master,” and so remained in prison for several years; and when he said to his brothers, “You are surely thieves,” to which they replied, “If he has stolen, then a brother of his stole before.” (1)

“And two young men entered the prison with him. One of them said, ‘Indeed, I saw myself pressing wine.’ The other said, ‘Indeed, I saw myself carrying bread upon my head, from which birds were eating. Inform us of its interpretation; indeed, we see you to be among the righteous.’” (36)

His saying, Most High, “And two young men entered the prison with him”: they were two servants belonging to al-Rayyan ibn al-Walid ibn Shirwan the Amalekite, (2) the great king of Egypt. One of them was his baker and keeper of his food, while the other was his cupbearer and keeper of his drink. The king became angry with them both and imprisoned them.

The reason for this was that a group of Egyptians wished to plot against the king and assassinate him. They offered these two men money to poison the king’s food and drink, and they accepted. Then the cupbearer withdrew from the plan, whereas the baker accepted the bribe and poisoned the food. When they brought the food and drink, the cupbearer said, “Do not eat, O King, for the food is poisoned.” The baker said, “Do not drink, for the drink is poisoned.”

The king said to the cupbearer, “Drink,” so he drank it, and it did him no harm. He then said to the baker, “Eat from your food.” But he refused, so the food was tested on an animal; it ate it and died. The king then ordered that they both be imprisoned.

When Joseph entered the prison, he began making his knowledge known, saying, “I interpret dreams.” One of the two young men said to his companion, “Come, let us test this Hebrew slave.” They feigned dreams before him and asked him about them, though neither of them had actually seen anything. Ibn Masud said: They had seen nothing; rather, they merely pretended to have dreams in order to test Joseph.

Others said: Rather, they had truly seen dreams. Joseph saw that they were distressed and asked them about their situation. They told him that they were attendants of the king, who had imprisoned them, and that they had seen a dream which troubled them. Joseph said, “Tell me what you saw,” so they related it to him.

“One of them said”—he was the keeper of the drink—“Indeed, I saw myself pressing wine”; that is, grapes. Grapes are called wine in reference to what they ultimately become, just as one says, “So-and-so fires bricks,” meaning that he fires the clay for bricks. It was also said that in the language of Oman, wine means grapes. This was because he said: “I saw myself as though I were in a garden, where there was the rootstock of a vine bearing three clusters of grapes. I picked them, and the king’s cup was in my hand. I squeezed them into it and gave the king to drink, and he drank it.”