Thus it came about on the third day, {which was} Pharaoh's birthday, that he made a feast for all his servants; and he lifted up the head of the chief cupbearer and the head of the chief baker among his servants.
Now the word I would like to focus on here is, surprisingly, "feast." This translation (NAS) which is usually quite good at a reasonable translation of Scripture, in fact does this word an injustice. Others translate it a bit more accurately as "banquet" but even that falls short at conveying the idea behind this Hebrew word.In English a "feast" means what? What do you picture? If you're anything like me, you picture a huge table filled with food--meats, breads, etc., right? "Feast" seems to imply food to eat. But this word is not talking about eating at all.
The Hebrew word here is "mishteh" and to explain what it means, I'll take you on a short journey.
All nouns in Hebrew are built off of verbs. Therefore things (nouns) are understood by the action (verb) associated with it. To briefly depict this, take a pencil. If someone asked you to describe a pencil, you might say that it's about six inches long, yellow, and has an lead on one end and an eraser on the other end. This is a description of what it looks like. A Hebrew of Bible times would rather describe it as something you hold in your hand and write with. They would describe it by it's action. This idea makes its way into the language, where nouns are always built off of verb roots.
Now, in Hebrew, one way that verbs are made into nouns is by simply adding an "m" sound on the front of the word. For instance one Hebrew word a lot of people are familiar with is mitzvah, as in a Bar or Bat Mitzvah. Mitzvah means "commandment." It comes from the root tzavah meaning "to command." Do you see how the "m" sound in front changed the root from a verb to a noun?Our word in Genesis is mishteh. This word uses the same format as mitzvah--it is a verb root preceded by the 'm' sound. So what is the verb root? The root here is shatah meaning "to drink." Therefore in the Hebrew mind, this kind of a banquet is a place of drinking.
I can hear American minds start to buzz. Drinking? Drinking, like, alcohol? Well, the word shatah equates fairly well to our word 'drink,' which is equally applicable regardless of what you're drinking. However, in Scripture mishteh does seem to refer exclusively to a place of drinking wine.
Now, I fully realize that a good portion of the American church believes that all alcohol consumption is sin. I am not of this mind. I don't, however, intend this one post to go into all of the reasons I see in Scripture on the subject, but rather to point out this one word and one very important application.
The Old Testament uses this word mishteh many times, referring specifically to a gathering where wine is drunk. In the New Testament, Jesus presented the idea of a very important application of this idea:
Matt 22Could this wedding feast also be a mishteh? I very strongly suspect it. Jesus was a Jew, raised on the Scriptures, and he spoke to a Jewish audience. Early on in His ministry he attended a wedding feast which featured wine as a key element. Did He anticipate then that His audience would understand that this feast He spoke of also included wine as a key element? I definitely think so.
Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying, "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son ..."
If this is the case, then what is the wine which will be present at the wedding supper of the Lamb? I believe this to be a direct reference to the Holy Spirit, whose work in the lives of men is not only paralleled to wine many times, but also seems to produce a very similar effect to that of wine.
I see then, in this one word mishteh, the promise that at the wedding supper of the Lamb the wine of the Holy Spirit will be poured out for all who are there. It will be a day of great drinking and dancing and rejoicing.

Psalm 23:5
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You have anointed my head with oil;
My cup overflows.



