When Joseph stood before Pharaoh, he did not hedge. The seven wasted cattle and the seven thin ears scorched by the east wind were not two dreams but one, doubled for emphasis. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 41:27, the Aramaic paraphrase known in tradition as the Targum Yerushalmi and reaching its final form around the seventh or eighth century CE, puts it plainly: the sickly cattle "announce seven other years," and the blighted ears "likewise make known that there will be seven years of famine."
Why the dream came twice
A message doubled is a message confirmed. The rabbinic tradition reads Joseph's own words: "the dream was doubled unto Pharaoh twice, because the thing is established by God, and God will shortly bring it to pass" (Genesis 41:32). Pharaoh did not need a suggestion. He needed certainty urgent enough to overturn the economy of Mizraim. The ears blighted by the east wind — the ruach kadim, the scorching desert wind that ruins Egyptian harvests — were the proof that this was not metaphor. It was meteorology with a deadline.
The takeaway
When a warning arrives twice, it is not repetition. It is insistence. Joseph's greatness was hearing the urgency and acting on it before the first ear had withered.