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

The Levite and His Concubine - Sometimes it's just too late to say you're sorry

It's like Bible Study with a smaller time commitment

So this Levite (member of tribe of Levi) had this hot young concubine. But she wasn't fond of the guy (who was probably beating her) so she took off and went back to her dad's place to hide out (according to the bible this makes her a whore). After four months our good Levite friend bought a dozen roses and a box of chocolates and took a trip to the dad's place. He got there, told the girl he was sorry and he just wasn't himself that night he beat her, and would never hit her again.

So concubine forgives the douchbag and they hang out at her dad's place for a few days. Then dad and concubine keep tricking douchbag into staying longer, but finally douchbag gets sick of it and leaves for home in the middle of the afternoon. They can't finish the trip in just a few hours so they get a room in the town if Gibeah which was under the management of the tribe of benjamin. Naturally a mob formed to try to rape douchbag (as tends to happen in the bible), but the owner of the B&B told the mob to take his virgin daughter and the concubine instead. So the mob took the concubine (but not the daughter) and gang raped her until morning, when she was able to crawl back to the door of the B&B before dying.

Douchbag wakes up in the morning, figures out what happened and takes his dead concubine back to his house where he chops her up into pieces and sends them out the leadership of the 12 tribes of Isreal. So they had a war conference and decided to kill everyone from the tribe of Benjamin. They attacked and killed all the men (600 of them escaped into the winderness) and all the cattle. They burned down all the buildings. Then they killed all the women and children.

After the war someone figured out that nobody from Jabesh-Gilead helped wipe out the Tribe of Benjamin, so the Israelites went and destroyed that city too, killing everyone but the virgin women which they could take home with them for later use.

After the tribe of Benajmin was nearly obliderated because the Levite douchbag's concubine was raped to death, the the old israelites got together and decided it was bad kharma to commit genocide against their relatives. To fix things they decided the Benjaminites needed wives. This was going to be tricky because they Benjaminite women had all been put to the sword and they didn't want them to hook up with any Israeli women.

It was eventually decided that the surviving Bejaminites should kidnap a bunch of women from a neighboring country. They did this and moved back to their burned out cities and fixed them up. Yay!




The artist says the woman in the middle is duct taped to a donkey and is not screaming like the
other two because her mouth is also duct taped. This seems highly accurate to me. I mean,
why carry the woman you are kidnapping when you can just strap her to a donkey?


Ref: Judges chapters 19, 20, and 21