Throughout the stories of Joseph interpreting the dreams of the Pharaoh’s butler and baker, and then of the Pharaoh himself, the Bible uses the verb poter (“interpreting”) and the noun pitaron (“interpretation,” “meaning,” or “solution”) exactly fourteen times (Gen. 40–41). These terms are inflections of the triliteral root PEH-TAV-REISH, but beyond this pericope, no others words derived from that root appear anywhere else in the Bible! Instead, the Bible and later Hebrew typically use a whole slew of other terms for “interpretation,” like pesher, beiur, peirush, and hesber — but not pitaron. This essay attempts to define the various Hebrew terms for “interpretation” with more nuance, and use that understanding to show in what ways they resemble and differ from one another.

Radak in Sefer HaShorashim looks only at the cases in which inflections of pitaron appear in the Bible as his evidence, and based on that evidence concludes that pitaron refers specifically to the “interpretation of a dream,” and not to all others sorts of interpretations. Rabbi Meir Leibush Weiser (1809–1879), better known as the Malbim, in his work Yair Ohr makes the same point, and explicitly uses that to differentiate between pitaron (which refers to interpreting dreams) and its near-synonyms peirush and beiur (which refer to interpreting other things, like enigmatic texts).

This usage of pitaron is also found in the Talmud (Brachot 55b), which teaches that at one point in history, there were twenty-four potrei chalomot (“dream interpreters”) in Jerusalem, using an agent noun (that is, a noun derived from a verb) based on this Biblical Hebrew term for dream interpretation.

In fact, the rabbis even take the place-name Petor in the Bible and interpret it as a reference to “dream interpretation.” When the Moabite king Balak contracted Balaam to curse the Jews, the Torah relates that he sent messengers to Petor (Num. 22:5). The Midrash (Bamidbar Rabbah §20:7, Tanchuma Balak §4, see Rashi there) offers two explanations of what Petor means: either Petor (or Petorah) was the name of Balaam’s hometown in the Aram region, or it refers to Balaam’s original occupation as a professional dream interpreter (poter), before he turned to sorcery. The Maharal of Prague (1525-1609) in Gur Aryeh (to Num. 22:5) synthesizes these two explanations by explaining that Balaam’s place of residence came to be called Petor on account of the fame it achieved due to its very own denizen Balaam becoming a world-renowned dream interpreter. [Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Ferber of London (1879–1966) identifies this city as the ancient city of Patru, an archeological site which lies on the west bank of the Euphrates River, just south of Carchemish. In the Talmud (Chullin 54b), there is an Amoraic sage named Rav Chana of Petor.]

Perhaps the appearance of the Hebrew root PEH-TAV-REISH specifically in stories that occurred with Joseph in Egypt somehow relates to the word Patros — which consists of those three letters, plus a final SAMECH — that actually serves as a reference to “Egypt” itself. [For more on the Hebrew words that refer to Egypt, see “Escape from Patros” (April 2023).]

Although until now we’ve only encountered inflections of poter that refer specifically to “dream interpretation,” the Talmud (for example, see Eruvin 32b and Ketubot 107b) sometimes uses inflections of poter as if to say about a certain teaching “it should be (re)interpreted [as referring to…]“ — even if that teaching has nothing to do with dreams.........

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