Bar Haddaya, the dream interpreter who gave favorable readings to paying clients and devastating ones to non-payers, eventually paid for his corruption with his life. Berakhot 56b records both his method and his downfall.
The Talmud preserves a parallel tradition of honest dream interpretation through Rabbi Yishmael. When his nephew Ben Dama dreamed that his two cheeks fell off, Rabbi Yishmael read it as a sign that two Roman battalions who had spoken evil against him had died. Cheeks represent mouths that speak; their falling meant the slander was finished.
Bar Kappara brought a series of alarming dreams to Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi. "My nose fell off"—anger (ḥaron af, חרון אף, literally 'burning of the nose') has been removed from you. "My hands were cut off"—you will not need the labor of your hands, for you will be wealthy. "My legs were cut off"—you will ride a horse. "They told me I would die in Adar and not see Nisan"—you will die in glory (adruta, a wordplay on Adar) and never face temptation (nissayon, a wordplay on Nisan).
Every interpretation turns on a pun. The Hebrew and Aramaic language is treated as a code where the sound of a word matters as much as its meaning. A month name becomes a destiny. A body part becomes a metaphor. The interpreter does not decode the dream so much as rewrite it through wordplay.
A different kind of interpretation appears when a heretic approaches Rabbi Yishmael with dreams. Each dream reveals the heretic's own depravity—incest, kidnapping, adultery. Rabbi Yishmael reads every symbol as an accusation. The dreamer's character determines what the dream means. As the verse teaches: "For as he thinks in his heart, so is he" (Proverbs 23:7).