8 And it came to pass in the morning that his spirit was troubled; and he sent and called for all the magicians of Egypt, and all the wise men thereof: and Pharaoh told them his dream; but there was none that could interpret them unto Pharaoh.

The very next morning Pharaoh is obsessed to know the meaning of his dreams. Note that he does not merely turn to whatever wise men or magicians are already in his court, right off the bat he wants to pull all of them in, throughout the entire kingdom!

And what an opportunity this would have created for these mystics. What better way to prove yourself, to show that you are the master of your craft? Here are all of your competitors gathered in one place and all of them stumped by the same dream. Surely if you could provide the proper interpretation, you would be the undisputed greatest of them all!

Except that not even a single one of them manages to do it! It’s the greatest opportunity of their lives and none of them can seize the moment. Perhaps they were too afraid to just make it up, to employ whatever trickery they used on their typical clients. If they did, and it was found out, then they would face the wrath of the most powerful man in the land!

The problem for all these mystics was that their power was likely based in smoke and mirrors, or chance and delusion. Maybe they were observant enough to find connections that most people missed, but this dream defied even the most imaginative of human intellects. Clearly the dream is foretelling something ominous, but the exact details of what are impossible to tell. No man could do it by his power alone.