Throughout he book of Matthew, dreams are used by God and other divine spirits to talk to humans. This is a dramatic shift from Genesis which is interesting to note

In the book of Genesis, God always spoke with the humans directly. In book 1, he spoke to Adam and Eve. In book 2, He still spoke to Adam and Eve. In book 3, he spoke to Cain and Abel. In the next books, he speaks to Noah and Abraham directly. However, immediately after the book of Genesis, God stops speaking directly to people and begins communicating with humans through dreams. Foe example, God tells Joeseph that mary is pregnant through an angel sent in a dream of Joseph’s. Then when king Harod was going to kill all the boys in Bethlehem, God warned Joseph through a dream. This is a great contrast to God’s previous methods of contact. Then, as Jesus ages, Jesus spreads the world and rules of God for God. Jesus is God’s son and was put on Earth in order to share God’s rules with all of the humans.

Instead of direct communication with God, God begins to use these new methods in order to reach out to people. He no longer goes up to them and speaks. One of these methods is the dream. Dreams are known as very personal things that happen to us as we sleep. No one can exactly know what goes on in our dreams unless we tell them. With the story of Joseph, no one could share the details of the dream other than he himself.

When I read this, I think about all the people throughout history that have claimed to speak to God. Most claim it was through a dream. Since a dream can be seen by none other than the person who is dreaming, none can refute the person’s claims. I think that at the time of the bible’s initial writing, many men have claimed to have dreams where they spoke to God. Dreams of God were probably a common thing. Most people’s dreams show reflections of something in their life. Since these people believed in God, dreams about him were probably common, thus making people feel a divine connection to God after these dreams. To this day people claim to speak to God in their dreams.