Joseph Passes Through His Suffering - like a kidney stone

With the power of hindsight, I can see that making the sex with Mrs. Potiphar would have kept Joseph from his eventual fortune

While all the magicians and wise men were working on, and failing to provide, an interpretation of Pharaoh’s dreams the chief butler had a severe attack of conscience. Mr. Chief Butler told Pharaoh all about the Hebrew prisoner Joseph who had successfully interpreted his and the chief baker's dreams. As you would expect, Pharaoh sent for Joseph. Joseph was immediately pulled from prison, shaved (to get rid of the fleas and lice), and put in appropriate clothing.

Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I understand that you can interpret dreams.” Joseph replied, “I cannot, but Jehovah will use me to provide you with the answers you seek.” Pharaoh eagerly recited his freaky dreams to Joseph. Joseph didn’t even have to blink an eye. He immediately said, “You are very fortunate. Jehovah sent you these dreams to tell you must do. The seven healthy cows and seven healthy heads of grain represent seven years of super awesome harvests. The seven anorexic-looking things represent seven years of famine that will follow the seven plentiful years. The great and powerful Pharaoh must appoint a wise and virtuous man to be in charge of Egypt. One fifth of all grain production must be stored for seven years so it can be distributed to the people during the years of famine so everyone doesn’t die.”

Pharaoh liked this explanation and made Joseph his second-in-command, in charge of all Egypt. Then Pharaoh gave Asenath, who was the daughter of one of his priests, to Joseph for a wife and Joseph finally got laid (with Mrs. Potiphar and Mr. Jeremy nowhere in sight). Over the next seven years Joseph oversaw the collection of grain and made two babies with Asenath. Then the famine began.

Joseph was clever so he sold the grain back to the people he took it from, and also sold it to the peoples of the surrounding countries. After Joseph had all the money, he started trading grain for cattle, and once he had all the cattle, he traded grain for land until he had all the land in Egypt. He did all this for Pharaoh of course. Getting rich on the side had nothing to do with it.

Once Joseph owned everything in the country he let the people of Egypt work the land, on the condition that 20% of everything they produced be delivered unto Pharaoh.

Moral: with Jehovah on your side, you can buy a major country.

Ref: Genesis 41:9-57 & Genesis 47:13-26

Please note: Joseph is the first recorded person in his line to marry outside the family. No cousin love for good ol' Joe.

Pharaoh Has Some Crazy Dreams – Play that funky music, white boy

Do you think God still uses dreams to tell us the future?

Two full years after the incident with the chief baker and chief butler, Pharaoh had a couple of crazy dreams that really bothered him. In the first dream seven big fat happy cows climbed up out of the river and started to graze in a meadow. Then seven anorexic cows, on the verge of death, climbed up out of the river and ATE the big fat happy cows! Now I reckon this should be the theme of a horror movie. Of course it would be a total rip off of the 1985 Stephen King Book “Thinner” which was made into a movie in 1996.




The skinny cows are starting to eat the fat cows

 Let’s see if we can make it work. Seven obese cows that were not very nice trampled an old gypsy’s daughter to death. Of course the obese cows were taken to court for “trampling” homicide, but they got off without any punishment. Because the legal systems failed the poor gypsies, the old man gypsy decided to get even with the cows using a “thinner” curse. The cows just kept losing weight no matter how much they ate. Finally they went a little crazy and attacked the happy, nice cows ripping out chunks of bloody flesh with their blunt, herbivore teeth until nothing remained.

Gross: no wonder Pharaoh was upset.

The second dream was probably even creepier. Pharaoh dreamed that seven fat, healthy heads of grain grew on a single stalk. Now if that wasn’t weird enough seven more heads of grain grew on the same stalk. Now it had 14 heads of grain. The new heads weren’t attractive though. They were dry, shriveled and diseased looking. Then the seven anorexic heads of grain ATE the healthy heads of grain. I just keep imagining claymation heads of anorexic grain sliding up and down the stalk, splitting open and eating the healthy grain heads with little white clay teeth. Bleeaugh.

As soon as Pharaoh awoke from these harrowing dreams, he immediately sent out summons for all the magicians and wise men of Egypt. Sadly, none of these were able to interpret his dreams.

Moral: Pharaoh has some crazy dreams

Ref: Genesis 41:1-8