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

Samson is Born – Watch out for Flying Angels

Every superhero/supervillan needs an origin story

As was typical for this biblical time period, the children of Israel were in bondage to the Philistines because Jehovah was punishing them for being bad. After 40 years the Lord decided it was time to start thinking about letting the Israelites self-govern again. Like so many of these bible stories involving miraculous children, Samson’s mother was barren. Sometimes (as in the case of Abraham’s wife) the woman is barren because she is too old. However, I just sort of assume in the bible that when age isn’t blamed, these women can’t get pregnant because they are too young and they don’t start having babies because God blesses them. They start having babies because they are finally old enough. But I digress . . .

Manoah’s wife hadn’t given birth, ever. Since this story is about her and she is unnamed in the Bible, I am going to call her Cheeky. One day an angel showed up and said to Cheeky, “You can’t have kids. I’m here now though, and I say you are going to have a kid very soon. Here’s the important part, so PAY ATTENTION! You cannot drink wine, or any other strong drink, or eat anything unclean. You are going to have a son and you can never cut his hair because he is going to be a Nazarite from birth until death and he will begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.”

This was unusual because a man usually became Nazarite temporarily as an adult due to an oath. That person would then avoid drinking alcohol, eating or drinking anything that was related to grapes (raisins, wine, etc), cutting hair, or touching anything dead. At the end of the Nazarite term they would shave their head in the temple courtyard and burn their hair on the altar.

Well, Cheeky found the whole experience rather disconcerting and went to tell her husband all about it. Manoah was a pious man and decided it would be best to get direct instruction himself to make sure he didn’t mess up the whole Nazarite child thing. He prayed to Jehovah and said, “Please send the angel that talked to Cheeky to us again so we can get proper instruction on how to care for this child.”

Jehovah listened to Manoah’s request and sent the angel again. This angel must have been slightly retarded, because he went to Cheeky again when she was working in the fields all by herself. No harm done though; Cheeky saw the angel and immediately ran to fetch her husband. Manoah asked the angel how they should raise the child. The angel just said that Cheeky needed to do everything she had been told previously.

This wasn’t the answer Manoah was looking for, but he didn’t want to anger the angel, so he invited him to dinner. The angel didn’t want to eat and told Manoah to make a burnt offering to the Lord instead. When Manoah made the offering, the angel jumped into the flame and was carried up into heaven. Cheeky and Manoah freaked out when they saw this and immediately threw themselves onto their faces. Manoah said, “OhmyGodOhmyGodOhmyGodOhmyGodOhmyGodOhmyGod! We’re gonna die! OhmyGod we are so gonna die. We’ve seen the face of God and now we’re gonna die! Waaaa!”

Cheeky was a little more clear-headed and said, “Hold on, think for a minute. God isn’t going to kill us. If He was, He wouldn’t have shown us all these cool things about the new baby and He wouldn’t have accepted our burnt offering. We’re going to be OK.”

So Cheeky got pregnant and had a son. She named him Samson and as he grew, the Lord blessed him. And he didn’t eat grapes.

Ref: Judges 13

Hannah gives Samuel to the Lord – Who knew that Jehovah was looking to adopt?

My limericks are getting worse, much worse

Elkanah had two wives
Who satisfied his drives
Peninnah gave birth
Hannah had a dearth
Of kids to share their lives

Elkanah had these two wives, Hannah and Peninnah. As is so often the case in these biblical stories, Elkanah liked Hannah best, but Peninnah was the one who kept having children. Hannah’s inability to produce offspring was a cause of great concern to her (she was probably pre-pubescent and Elkanah liked her best because he was turned off by “personal hair”). Peninnah always worked to make things worse too. It was very clear to Peninnah that Hannah was the favorite wife so Peninnah was mean to her as often as possible. Because the lack of kids was a sore spot for Hannah, that was usually how Peninnah tried to make Hannah feel like dirt: dirt that can’t reproduce.

One day Hannah went to the temple and prayed. She told Jehovah that if he would give her a baby then she would give him to the Lord and make sure that kid never had his hair cut (God digs long hair on dudes). The priest Eli noticed this young woman kneeling by the temple steps and moving her lips. He figured she’d snuck some liquor from her parents, had fallen to her knees by the temple, and was trying to work out how to stand up again.

Eli walked over to Hannah and said, “You are way too young, and it is way too early in the morning for you to be stumbling around drunk. You really need to lay off the alcohol.” Hannah answered saying, “I am not drunk sir. I’m just sad. I’ve been kneeling here praying to the Lord.” Eli felt kinda bad for judging her so he said, “Oh, ok. Um, you can leave now. I’m quite certain that Jehovah will give you what you’ve asked for.”

So Hannah went home and she had sex that night with Elkanah. God must have liked Hannah WAY better than all the other women who pray for children because she got pregnant that very evening. Hannah gave birth without incident and named the kid Samuel. As soon as she stopped nursing (so the kid was probably three of four – that’s right, people used to nurse for WAY longer than they do now) she took him to the temple and told Eli he would have to care for him from then on because that was part of her deal with God.

The best part of this story is that after giving Samuel to Eli, Hannah had another five kids. It's amazing how much going through puberty helps when you're trying to reproduce. In fact, I fully endorse puberty as something every women should experience before trying to have kids.

Ref: 1 Samuel 1 & 1 Samuel 2:20-21

The expansive epic of Jacob, son of Isaac: Part 5 – Jacob works for his uncle/cousin/father-in-law a bunch more

Yahweh takes a hand at genetic engineering

Now Rachel was pretty mad that Leah kept having kids and she didn’t. Of course she didn’t realize that the arrival of pubic hair and breasts are usually seen as a prerequisite. To deal with the situation Rachel gave one of her slaves to Jacob to make babies. This slave had two sons, Dan and Naphtali, which Rachel claimed as her own. Not to be outdone Leah gave her slave to Jacob and she had two sons, Gad and Asher. Then one day Rachel noticed Leah’s son Reuben had found a bunch of mandrakes. Rachel told Leah to give her the mandrakes. Leah didn’t want to and said, “What the hell? It’s bad enough that you stole my husband, but now you want my son’s mandrakes? No way bitch!” Rachel was a clever girl and usually knew how to get her way. She said, “Look, if you give me the mandrakes I’ll make sure Jacob has sex with you tonight.” Leah was really hard up so she agreed and Jacob started having sex with her again. She had two more sons, Issachar and Zebulun, and a daughter, Dinah.

FINALLY enough time passed that Rachel hit puberty. She was then able to get pregnant and had a son which she named Joseph of the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat.

After Joseph was born Jacob went and asked Laban, his cousin/uncle/father-in-law, permission to take his wives and children and go back home. Laban didn’t like that idea very much. He said that Yahweh was clearly helping him out because Jacob was there and invited Jacob to stay and work longer. He just had to name his price. Jacob agreed to stay in exchange for all the speckled and spotted cows and goats and the brown sheep. This sounded ok to Laban, but he didn’t count on Jacob and Yahweh being such sneaky bastards. You see, every time the strong non-speckled/brown animals would get together to make babies Jacob set some striped sticks in the ground in front of them. All the animals that conceived while looking at the sticks had brown or speckled babies which then belonged to Jacob. He let the weak animals conceived naturally so Laban only got the inferior offspring.

After a while Laban figured out something was fishy about the arrangement with Jacob and he stopped being such a fan of having Jacob work for him. Yahweh noticed and told Jacob it was time to take all his stuff and move back home. Jacob had a family meeting and asked his wives what they thought. Leah said, “Screw that old bastard. He sold me to some jerk that doesn’t even like me.” And Rachel said, “Yeah. He sold me too; way before I was old enough to make babies. That was really bad for my self-esteem. Screw that bastard. We’re both going with you and our kids.”

Ref: Genesis 30:1 - 31:18