Joseph Makes Prison Buddies (Genesis 40)

One day, Pharaoh became displeased with his chief cupbearer and chief baker and throws them in prison. It’s a good thing for them that he didn’t have a rancor in a pit somewhere.  As luck would have it, the two men end up in Joseph’s prison, and the captain of the guard tells Joseph to keep his eye on the new guys.  After a little while, the chief cupbearer and chief baker each dream a dream that uneases each of them, and they don’t have a chief dream interpreter in prison this month. Joseph has had some experience with dreams, however, and says to them, “Do not all interpretations belong to God?” (40:8)

We start with the cupbearer. In his dream, there were three branches on a grape vine that bloomed and ripened into grapes which the cupbearer squeezed into Pharaoh’s cup and served him. Joseph interprets this dream to mean that in three days, Pharaoh will come to his senses and restore the chief cupbearer to his original position. Oh, and because I, Joseph, just interpreted your dream so incredibly favorably, do tell the Pharaoh about me since I was ripped from my homeland and am actually completely innocent. Seeing that the cupbearer’s dream interpretation was so wonderful, the chief baker offers up his dream too. In his dream, he had three cake baskets on his head, but birds were eating the food in the top one that was meant for Pharaoh.  Joseph, unfortunately, does not have good news about this one.  He tells the baker that his dream foreshadows his execution and public display of his remains in three days. Sucks for you, guy. So three days later, it’s Pharaoh’s birthday. What an amazing coincidence! Joseph was dead on, too. The chief cupbearer gets restored to his position, and the chief baker…well, Pharaoh had found a new chief baker. And does the chief cupbearer remember to tell Pharaoh about Joseph like he promised? Of course not!

So far, the bible is full of word play, puns, and little jokes for the reader that range from insightful to delightful. Some of it I’ve shared with you. Some of it I’ve left out. Really it depends on my mood and how tickled I was by it.  Joseph gets a pretty good one in here saying that Pharaoh would “lift up your head” to each of the men, and adds, “—from you!” to the baker. Oh snap.  I do want to point out something in the same vein that I don’t think I have yet: the sacredness of the name of God. Footnotes have helped me out with this yet again, especially because I’m reading this in English and not Hebrew. When the Israelites talk amongst themselves about God, they tend to use “YHWH”, the name of God that gets translated into “the Lord”. When they talk to anyone else, they use only ever use “God”. I know there are a lot of people out there who would be outraged by the exclusionism of this. In fact, a lot of them like to live on commenting sections on news articles or YouTube videos. I like it, though. I think rituals and keeping things sacred is important, no matter what it is you keep sacred.  Sacredness, specialness, setting things apart. Whether you go to church every week, walk daily, or watch A Muppet Family Christmas every December, or keep the name of God sacred. It puts you in a different mindset. You pay special attention to it. It can cause you to re-evaluate. It can cause you to remember. It can cause you to grow. Truly experience it every time, and live in that experience.

<3 Agnostic in the Pews

Meanwhile in Egypt… (Genesis 39)

We pick back up with Joseph after he’s been bought in Egypt by Potiphar, the officer of Egypt’s then Pharaoh. Because God loves Joseph so much, and is with him all the time, Joseph prospers. Everything he touches turns to organizational fortune and glory. Joseph was so good at everything, he wasn’t just any slave left to tend the fields or build pyramids. No sir. Joseph was a well-kept house slave. Not only that, but he was made overseer of the whole household. But wait there’s more! He’s handsome and good-looking too. What happens when a man has that much goin’ for him? Women want to be with him. Women like, say, Potiphar’s wife. She was so keen on Joseph she couldn’t keep it in her pants. She propositioned him time after time, and because Joseph was respectable and pious to boot, he kept turning her down.  One day, she was so insistent that she grabbed his garment while trying to get into his almighty pants. The only way Joseph could get out of the situation was to wriggle his way out of his clothes while she was holding them and bolt. Now that just won’t do for Potiphar’s wife… So she went around telling everyone that Joseph tried to get in her pants, and was in such a hurry to get away that he left his clothes behind.  When she gets around to telling her dear husband, Potiphar is visibly angered and throws Joseph into jail… where he promptly makes good friends with the chief jailer and becomes a model prisoner with God’s help.

So I’ve got to say, I know Joseph got the short end of the stick by being sold into slavery by his brothers, but that guy has a metric ton going for him. He’s the guy everyone wants to be or be with. He’s beyond reproach. That’s why I’m pretty sure that Potiphar didn’t believe his wife.  Really, if Joseph were going to be punished appropriately for his supposed crime, he probably would’ve been castrated, or put to death…or castrated to death… Instead, he gets a lenient jail time sentence.

I also want to touch on the first woman to cry rape.  Before I even get into this one, I need to start by saying that a rape victim is never at fault in any way, shape, or form. Having said that, there are times that a person, usually a woman, falsely accuses another person of rape because the accuser knows people’s reaction to rape is guilty until proven innocent, even though we all know it’s supposed to be the other way around. I have no way to describe how angry that situation makes me. Many expletives, multiples of me, fires of thousands of suns… not even close.  But man, props to Joseph to keeping his head held high and going about his business as usual. Well, as usual as he could while imprisoned.

<3 Agnostic in the Pews

An Interlude of In-Laws and Prostitution (Gen 38)

This chapter is apparently the brief interlude in the Joseph story. Like a commercial for how to properly be a brother-in-law back in the day. It even came at the proper dramatic TV moment where Joseph had just been sold into slavery... (Insert Law & Order dun-dun noise here).

We launch immediately into Judah's family and offspring. Remember Judah? The brother that suggested they sell Joseph instead of just leaving him for dead. Well, God smites Judah's firstborn, Er, for being wicked, and then Er's brother Onan didn't fulfill his brother-in-law duties of sleeping with Er's widow Tamar... so Onan also feels the mortal wrath. Judah tells Tamar to go back and live with her father because, well, my footnote says it so brilliantly, "Judah effectively consigns Tamar to oblivion."

Then Judah's wife dies. This one's natural though, no smiting needed. After the appropriate time of mourning, Judah finally goes to shear his sheep. Yep. Anyways, when Tamar hears this, she takes off her widow's wear, puts on a fancy veil, and goes and sits along the road that Judah will be travelling to go...shear his sheep. When Judah happens across cloaked and veiled Tamar, he thinks she's a temple prostitute. Fans of the show Firefly would also call her a Companion. The Hebrew word for it literally translates to "sacred woman." Anyways, when he propositions her, and has no immediate payment, she suggests a few things she can hold for collateral until she gets her baby goat as payment, specifically his signet, cord, and staff. Time passes, sex is had, and Judah sends along that baby goat with someone to look for the "prostitute." Because Tamar was not actually a Companion, none can be found!

More time passes. Three months to be exact, and Judah is told that Tamar has been whoring and is preggers "as a result of her whoredom" (Gen 38:24). Clearly, this means she needs to get burned at the stake. Can I pause here to acknowledge again that the Bible uses the word "whoredom?" Okay. So at this point, Tamar brings out Judah's stuff, and he's all embarrassed that he slept with his daughter-in-law. It does, however, legitimize her pregnancy. Yay for not getting burned at the stake! Eventually, Tamar goes into labor and has twins. The firstborn actually ends up as the second born... it's a little weird. Either way, my footnotes tell me that this whole little interrupting story line is important because Tamar's son Perez (the eventual first born) begets the line of King David. If you don't already know: King David is kind of a big deal.

<3 Agnostic in the Pews

Joseph and the Technicolor Robe of Sibling Rivalry (Gen 37)

Now that Jacob has finally settled down in the land of Canaan, we move on to his sons. Joseph specifically. You know him. The seventeen year old spoiled tattle-tale.  He was the youngest, and so most loved by Jacob. Fancy robe and everything. Here the main text calls it a “long robe with sleeves” but footnotes also translate it as the more familiar coat of many colors. No matter what his coat looked like, his brothers hated him and his swanky duds. Joseph did incredibly little to ease sibling tensions. He had a few dreams in which his whole family bowed down to him as their ruler, first wheat based then astronomically. Needless to say, his brothers hated him even more for these dreams. I mean, seriously. Wouldn’t you? Jacob, however, knows a thing or two about prophetic type dreams and doesn't dismiss it out of hand.

One day, Jacob tells Joseph to go check on his brothers who were tending the sheep, probably because he knew Joseph would tattle if they were doing anything untoward. As it turns out, his brothers had moved the flock… Not that Joseph gets the chance to say anything about it.  They see him coming, and they start plotting to murder him. Serious sibling rivalry indeed. One brother, Reuben, pauses the bloody train of thought. He persuades the other brothers to just throw Joseph in a pit alive, instead of killing him and then throwing him in the pit. When they agree, he apparently leaves (if only because later in the chapter he comes back).  Joseph comes up, they strip him of his fancy robe with sleeves, throw him in a pit, and sit down for lunch. All that plotting to kill your own brother must stir up an appetite.  While they’re grubbing, a caravan comes along. One brother named Judah was apparently a Ferengi in another life because he starts looking for the profit in the situation.  He convinces the others to sell their brother to the caravan for 20 pieces of silver. Now how to explain all of this to dear old dad who loved the youngest son most of all? Fake Joseph’s death of course. The brothers took the robe, shred it, douse it in goat blood, and allow Jacob to draw his own conclusions.  Meanwhile, Joseph has been sold again to Pharaoh’s captain of the guard.

Okay. So parent-child favoritism is really bad. This is not the first story from Genesis displaying this. It makes me wonder how prevalent an issue this really was…or is. We’ve also got sibling rivalry blown out of proportion yet again.  Now, I’ve got sisters. And as kids we fought. Okay, that may be an understatement. There were occasional mini-world-wars in our household. Did we ever beat on each other and plot to ruin each other’s lives? Sure. Plot to murder? I don’t think so. At least I didn’t. My sisters may tell you a different story, but rest assured ladies, I was never actually going to kill you. Maybe it’s different with brothers? Probably not that different. Eventually everyone grows up, moves out, and you realize that you can actually be friends with the people you have all of these shared experiences with. I know it doesn’t always work out that way, but it’s nice when it does.  Growing up, I never thought I’d be friends with my sisters. Not in a million years. I wouldn’t trade them for anything now.

<3 Agnostic in the Pews

Jacob Finally Goes Home (Gen 35-36)

God tells Jacob to go home.  Shows up out of nowhere and tells him to go back to Bethel, put away any other gods, clean up, and go home. Jacob’s been away for a long time. In fact, he hasn’t been home since he stole Esau’s birthright and ran away. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I’d be too keen on going home after that… ever.  But the ever dutiful Jacob does as he’s told. When he gets there, he gets a new name: Israel. He also gets the promises his father and grandfather got. You remember. Land abounding, offspring kings of nations. I believe it a little more now that he’s also called Israel, though.

As soon as all of that happens, they leave again, even though the deal was to settle in Bethel, and Rachel was the most pregnant. So pregnant, that she went into labor on the journey to their next destination (Ephrath).  She bore a son whom she named Ben-oni (lit. “Son of my sorrow”), and died. Jacob instead calls him Benjamin (lit. “Son of the South”), taking away the tragic element of his name and making it geographically based. They bury Rachel in the small town they were in and mark the site with a pillar. Some podunk little town called Bethlehem that no one has ever heard of…

Eventually Jacob/Israel (because this time the name change is more of an add-on than a real replacement) catch up with Isaac who promptly dies at 180 years old. Good timing. The bible doesn’t go into it at all, but Jacob and Esau bury their father together, hatchet apparently buried too. Esau is theoretically totally cool now. I mean, his little brother only stole his birthright, ran away, and didn’t come back for like, a whole lifetime, but we’re apparently just letting bygones be bygones. Props Esau for finding your inner peace. Care to share with the class how you did it? No? I’m sure it could help out. Or maybe you’re still bitter and that’s why you don’t want to talk about it. Or at all.

Chapter 36 (yep! Two whole chapters today!) is just a listing of Esau’s descendants which will eventually get added into that handy-dandy biblical family tree. Mostly the important thing here is that Jacob/Israel’s sons are (wait-for-it) Israelites. Esau’s spawn are Canaanites because his wives were Canaanites. But yeah… genealogy is the entirety of Chapter 36. 

<3 Agnostic in the Pews

Rape and Retribution (Genesis 34)

Okay, so since we last heard from Jacob, a lot of time passed, and his kids are all grown up now. Dinah, Leah and Jacob’s daughter, goes out into the world, gets seen by a prince named Shechem, and promptly raped by him. Raped. The next few verses talk about Shechem’s feelings for Dinah as love. “He loved the girl, and spoke tenderly to her” and he essentially commands that she will be his wife (Gen 34:3). Jacob “held his peace” until his sons come back from the field, and when they do, they are appropriately outraged that their sister has been defiled “for such a thing ought not to be done” (Gen  34:4, 7). The king (Hamor) and prince keep trying to get Dinah and the other Israelite women to become their wives, at whatever the price of the dowry. Jacob’s sons then decide to have a little fun with them, saying that unless all the men are circumcised, they will not be of one people, and they could never marry their women. And what do Hamor and Shechem do? The get together all the men in the city, and everyone gets circumcised… seems a little extreme, but okay. But while all the newly snipped men are still recovering, Dinah’s brothers go kill everyone, and Jacob’s other sons go and loot everything. Retribution. Then Jacob reprimands his sons for their behavior, and we’re left with his sons questioning back “Should our sister be treated like a whore?” (Gen 34:31).

I have serious mixed feelings about this. In part, this just disgusts me.  Dinah gets no voice of her own. Absolutely none. She’s talked about more as an object than a person. Granted, this is the Old Testament, written by stodgy old men in a time where women were property, not people. But still!! Then if that’s not enough, the fact that Shechem talks about his abounding love for Dinah after raping her just about made me throw the book across the room. Rape is a power trip, not love. Love has already been given some good precedents, like Jacob working forever to earn the hand of Rebekah, and this feels like it’s undermining all of that.

Moving on from the actual rape and theoretical motivations for it… Jacob and his sons’ reactions. I appreciate the justified anger of Jacob’s sons. They are legitimately outraged, and completely justified in it. But Jacob gives no guidance here. He just stays quiet until after his sons have incapacitated then murdered everyone. Now, I’m sure he wasn’t told the whole plan, but he could have pre-empted the entire situation by ending it as head of household before letting his sons meddle. And after it’s all over, he yells at them, trying to guide after the fact, but it just confuses his morally loose sons. It leaves them wondering how to let their sisters, wives, and daughters be treated at all.

We live in a culture that teaches to not get raped, instead of teaching not to rape. There are people in the world who honestly believe that “legitimate rape” causes a woman’s body to shut down and therefore not become pregnant because of it. While this stems from a debate about abortion, the idea is out there, and the rapists get latent sympathy. We are self-aware enough as a society, however, to know the attitude about rape, but instead of helping to solve the problem, it perpetuates it.  Every so often, you’ll hear a story about a girl who cries rape, but she consented, regretted, and knew she could take advantage of the system in place.  I wish I had some nugget of wisdom to add here about how we are continuing to grow and evolve. About how at least women aren’t actually property anymore. About how overzealous justice can still teach us something.  But I don’t. The whole thing just makes me sick to my stomach.

<3 Agnostic in the Pews

New Year, New Beginning

Second week of Advent. Second week in the church year. I thought really hard about coming back last week. New year, new start and all that jazz. It would’ve been a nice touch, and I honestly don’t know why I didn’t get my ass in gear.  This whole season is full of beginnings and endings though. The winter solstice marks the longest night, the end of the darkness and the return of the light. Second chances and starting overs will happen ad nauseum at the turn of the year. I’m going to get one in now.

My longtime silence here can be explained very easily: I got bored. It’s a roadblock that I’d been warned about, especially trying to read the Bible the way I was going to. To be fair, I did have a fairly busy stretch in that boredom that I might’ve warned you about otherwise… But really, I just got bored.  So I’m going to try something else. I’m going to actually go through that listing at the front of the bible I’ve got that wasn’t my mother’s.  When I hit passages I’ve already covered here, I’ll note when they’re recommended to be read, but I’m going to skip right over reading it a second time. I’m hoping that with the skipping around, I won’t get as bored, and I’ll be able to more easily talk about deeper issues than whose ancestors are whose.  It looks like I’ve got a few chapters of Genesis left to go before the Old Testament lets up for a little while, but now that I’ve got a check list that I can mark off chapters… I’ll feel slightly more accomplished and stick with it.  Like adding smaller and fun things to a to-do list.

And really? Comment. I want some discussion. Disagree with me. Agree with me. Tell me something I didn’t know. Or did know.

<3 Agnostic in the Pews