The Hebrews in Egypt – Moses Part I

Apparently Hebrews are a lot like rabbits.

After Joseph of the Technicolor Dream Coat relocated his extended family to Egypt they were super rich and multiplied like crazy. However, as the centuries came and went they lost their ties to the royal family and their protected status. Then they were just numerous, prosperous, and not Egyptian. After the Hebrews started to outnumber the Egyptians, Pharaoh decided he was concerned the Hebrews would side with an invading enemy and things would go poorly for Egypt. To solve this, all the Hebrews were pressed into government service and assigned taskmasters. Now, I’m obviously missing something here because I’m not sure how forced labor was going to keep the Hebrews from fighting against the government. Apparently nobody in Egypt watched the 1960 film Spartacus. If they had, I’m sure they would have realized that maintaining a slave class to perform all the manual labor leads accomplished gladiators named Kirk Douglas to lead slave uprisings.



Kirk Douglas as Spartacus

Pressing the Hebrews into slavery didn’t help Pharaoh feel any better. He noticed that the worse the Hebrews were treated, the more babies they had. I don’t know why he was surprised. If you take all electronic devices and reading material away and force people to stay indoors after dark; suddenly there is nothing to do in the evenings but have sex.

To solve the population growth problem, Pharaoh told all the Hebrew midwives to kill the baby boys right as they were being born. This was a really, really stupid idea for a couple of reasons. First: in a society that practices polygamy the men aren’t the limiting factor for population growth, the women are. I’m sure there were plenty of Hebrew men who were really excited by the prospect of surplus young women. Second: the Hebrew midwives didn’t want to kill the Hebrew babies. It didn’t take long for Pharaoh to notice the number of baby boys didn’t decrease, so he called in the Hebrew midwives and demanded to know why the babies weren’t being killed. The midwives were clever and came up with a clever lie. They said, “Well, the Hebrew women deliver really fast. By the time someone manages to summon a midwife, the baby has already been born.”

Finally Pharaoh came up with a sound plan to kill the babies. He charged all the citizens of Egypt with the responsibility of throwing baby Hebrew boys into the river. That worked a little better than birth canal abortions and represented significant progress toward achieving Pharaoh’s dream of seeing fewer Hebrew boys.

Moral: Pharaoh didn’t understand how babies are made.

Ref: Exodus 1

Note: wouldn’t it be nifty if there was any physical evidence that Egypt ever had a huge workforce made up of slaves?

Joseph is Still a Jerk – Family first

Why start out nice when you can be mean first and nice later?

Because Jehovah only provided a way for the Egyptians to have food during the seven year drought, but still afflicted the surrounding areas with a massive food shortage, a lot of people went hungry. Joseph’s family back in Canaan was among that group. As part of Joseph’s plan to accumulate all the money in the known world he was selling grain to these non-Egyptian type people.

Once Joseph’s father Jacob/Israel heard about the food sale he sent ten of his remaining eleven sons to go buy some. He didn’t send Benjamin because he was afraid something could happen to the sons and he would lose his other boy from his favorite wife, Rachel. When the 10 brothers arrived in Egypt, for some reason they had a personal audience with Joseph to buy grain instead of dealing with in intermediary. I reckon it’s because it makes the story better.

Of course Joseph recognized his brothers, but did not reveal his identity to them. Instead he accused them of being spies and had them thrown into prison. Of course they brothers said they weren’t spies and told Joseph all about their family, their father, all his wives, and their brother Benjamin.

After three days Joseph released nine of them and sold them the grain on the condition that they bring Benjamin back to Egypt with them to prove they were telling the truth. Then he promised to release the still imprisoned brother (Simeon) and sell them more grain. Joseph wasn’t done acting weird yet though. He had one of his slaves hide the money the brothers used to buy the grain in their grain sacks.

Here’s the problem. Jacob/Israel refused to let Benjamin go to Egypt to get Simeon back because he was still all hung up on the whole “son of Rachel” thing. That’s right; Jacob/Israel chose to let Simeon rot in an Egyptian prison.

I’m sure that would have been the end of it, but the grain ran out. Eventually hunger drove Jacob/Israel to agree to let Benjamin go to Egypt. This time Joseph was super nice to them; especially to his little brother Benjamin. Once again Joseph had a slave hide the money in the grain sacks, but this time Joseph also had the slave hide a super fancy silver cup in Benjamin’s sack. After the brothers put a little distance between themselves and the grain dispensary, Joseph sent some of his people to search the sacks, find the cup and arrest Benjamin.

The brothers were afraid to return to their father without Benjamin and went straight back to meet with Joseph. Judah begged Joseph to make him a slave and let Benjamin go because he was afraid his father would die if Benjamin didn’t make it back home. After the brothers described how the situation tore their father apart emotionally and how hard it was on him to only have one of his sons from his favorite wife, Joseph started to cry. He revealed himself to his brothers at last and invited them to all move to Egypt where they, their father, and their mothers would be well taken care of, because Joseph was super rich and would look after them.

Note: I wonder if having Jehovah’s favor makes it so you must dick with your family before hooking them up with food, or if it just makes it OK.

Ref: Genesis 43-45

Potiphar’s Wife – The ORIGINAL MILF

Wowzah!

The trick to making money as a slaver is to buy and sell as often as possible. The slavers that bought Joseph from his brothers understood that, so as soon as they got to Egypt they sold him to Potiphar, who was one of Pharaoh’s officers and the captain of the guard. Potiphar immediately put Joseph to work as part of the household staff. Now, Jehovah really liked Joseph, so He made everything Joseph did turn out really well.

Once Potiphar noticed that Joseph had the “magic touch” he made him the overseer of the entire household. This turned out to be a good decision for Potiphar because Jehovah now felt compelled to bless the household in everything. Things were going really well for everyone involved until a porno writer/director got involved in the story. We will call him Mr. Jeremy.

Mr. Jeremy wanted to make a video called “Super Egyptian MILF” so he scripted everything out for what he expected to be a beautiful piece of work. Everything was perfect. Potiphar’s veranda had a beautiful view of the Egyptian landscape and the open nature of a veranda lent that extra bit of excitement that comes with the possibility of being discovered, especially by the husband. The natural lighting was perfect, Potiphar’s wife was dark and smokin’ hot, and Joseph was young, virile, and “well favoured” (Genesis 39:6). Unfortunately Mr. Jeremy didn’t count on just how much trouble Joseph was going to give him.   



Many Islands Low Fares

 Once Joseph was alone with Mrs. Potiphar, and the cameras were rolling, Mrs. Potiphar gently laid her hand on Joseph’s and purred, “Lie with me” (Genesis 39:7). Joseph didn’t know what was going on with the film (Mr. Jeremy really wanted the eagerness of a young virgin man to show through, without the distraction of the lights, camera, and audience). He had never been with a woman before and his whole being suddenly exploded with desire, but he keenly remembered that one time when Reuben got caught having sex with one of their father’s wives and how much trouble it caused.

Joseph didn’t want to show up in the papers as “that one slave” who was executed for having the sex with his owner’s wife. So, instead of performing for Mr. Jeremy he gently removed his hand from Mrs. Potiphar’s and said, “Look, my master trusts me with everything in his entire household. No one here has more authority than I do. He has held back nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How could I do such a wicked thing? It would be a great sin against God." (Genesis 39:8-9, NLT)

Of course Mrs. Potiphar and Mr. Jeremy weren’t going to just give up. Mrs. Potiphar propositioned the sex every day for weeks; Joseph kept refusing. Finally Mrs. Potiphar tried a more direct route and grabbed Joseph before propositioning. Naturally Joseph freaked out and ran away, leaving Mrs. Potiphar holding his clothes in her hands. Well, Mrs. Potiphar decided she couldn’t take it anymore and that no amount of money from Mr. Jeremy could make her keep trying to bed that insulting jerk Joseph so she called the men of the household to her. She said, “Do you see what happens when Hebrew slaves are allowed to work here? Joseph tried to rape me and when I called out for help, he ran away. Here are his clothes; see?


          

Later, when Mr. Potiphar came home and heard the tale for himself, he immediately had Joseph thrown into prison so he could spend the appropriate amount of time devising a truly heinous way to kill the treacherous slave who’d tried to rape his wife.

Ref: Genesis 39

Note: MILF does not mean Many Islands Low Fares

                                                                                                                                                  
             
 

                                                                                                                                        

Joseph the Favorite – Watch out for mob justice

I’m pretty sure the coat wasn’t really the reason

If you remember, Jacob/Israel’s favorite wife was Rachel. We don’t have the ages of the Egyptian slaves Jacob made babies with, but I think it’s pretty safe to assume that Rachel was the youngest and prettiest. After all, she was Jacob’s hottest cousin and was the one he wanted to marry when he was a bachelor. All the other wives kept making babies while Rachel remained barren for years. Of course I maintain that Rachel was simply too young to reproduce. In any case, after years of non-reproductive sex, Rachel finally had a son and named him Joseph.

Jacob had already several sons by that time, but Joseph was immediately his favorite. When Rachel died giving birth to Benjamin it really cemented Jacob’s preference for Joseph and, to a lesser extent, Benjamin. Jacob even made Joseph a special coat using several different types of dye, which was really expensive. This would have been fine except Joseph knew he was the favorite and was a total smart ass, rubbing it in his brothers’ faces all the time.

One day when they all get together to hang out, Joseph told them some crazy stories about “dreams” he had. The first story was that when Joseph and his brothers were binding sheaves in the field and all of a sudden Joseph’s sheaf stood up and all his brother’s sheaves started to worship it. Then Joseph told a second story that the sun (his father), moon (his mother), and eleven stars (his brothers) all bowed down and worshiped him.

These stories didn’t just break the camel’s back; they squished the poor animal flat. It shouldn’t surprise you that later, when Jacob sent Joseph to check on his brothers who were out working (Joseph never worked), the brothers decided to kill him. They were going to go through with it too, until Reuben (the oldest) said that it would be bad karma to kill him themselves and instead they should just leave him in a pit to die. So, Joseph went into a pit and the brothers took his coat, ripped it up and smeared blood on it so they could tell their father that Joseph was killed by a wild animal.

This probably would have been the end of it, but when some slave traders passed by Judah saw a way to make a quick buck. Instead of leaving Joseph to die, his brothers sold him to the slavers for 20 pieces of silver. If you think “20 pieces of silver” shows up a lot in the bible, you’re right.

Moral: if you are an ass all the time, not even being daddy’s favorite will save you from some good ‘ol fashion frontier justice.

Ref: Genesis 37

Merry Christmas Part 2 – The birth of Jesus

Of course it seems possible. Everything appears possible to those who already believe.

According to the Gospel of St. Luke, approximately 2,000 years ago Cæsar Augustus commanded that all the world be taxed. In a massive display of dickishness, Cæsar said that in order to pay these taxes and be counted in the census everyone would have to return to their ancestral city. Of course this is absurd. What if someone didn’t know which city was their ancestral city? What if they had great grandparents who were born in different cities, which city would they go to? Exactly how far back does someone go along their ancestral line to determine the correct city? If a husband and wife have different ancestral homes they probably go to the husbands, but what about widows and spinsters? Does the city that counted a young woman when she traveled with her dad get confused when she doesn’t show up the next year because she got married? What about people too old to travel, do they get thrown in jail? Rich people travel with servants. How much trouble does it cause if the servants are forced to go to their master’s tax/census city so they can’t make it to their own? Of even greater concern is the economics of such a venture. If everyone had to take a month off work to go get counted and pay their taxes, that would represent an 8.3% decrease in annual productivity (and therefore tax income). No emperor of Rome was ever that stupid.

Even though this idea is so patently false, we’ll go ahead and indulge it now for the sake of the story. Joseph claimed he was descended from King David so he went to the City of David (Bethlehem). He took along his wife Mary. They’d been married a few months now so Mary was about ready to pop out Sarah’s older brother’s baby (complete with the touch of Holy Spirit). Between the taxes he owed and the huge amount he’d paid to buy Mary from her parents, Joseph just didn’t have enough coin left to pay for a room so he they were spending their nights in a cave outside of town that someone was using to shelter their animals. This worked out pretty well though because when Mary squeezed out Jesus she was able to set him in little manger, chock full of nice clean animal food, to rest between feedings.

That’s right, Jesus had to eat. I don’t know why people don’t ever think about Mary breast feeding. Of course Jesus would suck on her nipples. Seriously people, we don’t want the little guy to starve to death. This is the cool thing about Jesus breast feeding: when Jesus was really little there was a lot of extra magic floating around from his zygotic contact with the “Holy Spirit” so when he was especially content (i.e. breastfeeding) he would glow. He would glow really brightly. In fact, the light was so bright that it attracted all the shepherds working the night shift in the surrounding fields. They came to visit the baby and said, “This baby is clearly wondrous and magical. Surely such a creature is a sign that a time of great peace will shortly be upon us. Praise be to the Lord for allowing us to see such a miraculous thing.”

Then, many years later Christians started celebrating Jesus’ birth during the Winter solstice (probably around the year 354), which is a shame. Jesus was clearly not born in the winter near Jerusalem. Those months are much too wet for shepherds to be out in the hills with their flocks. It’s also pretty lame that the Romans celebrated the solstice on December 25^th instead of the 21^st. Oh well. At least the Germans were good enough to lend Sinterklaas to the Americans in the 19^th century so they could come up with Santa Claus. Yay for Santa!

Merry Christmas Folks. Seriously.

Ref: Luke 2:1-17