Since it's been about 2 months, you might wanna skim the last entry just to remember where we left off. These chapters are mostly a whole bunch of nothing. But even thought the content is lacking there are still some interesting things to learn and think about. I'll try not to skip over as much of the biblical scholarship of this section to prepare you for a lengthier digression on the history of the god of Israel that I'll dive into in Exodus after he reveals his name to his chosen people. That is one of the most important events in the Hebrew Bible from an academic perspective.
We're about to start the story of Joseph. Having already reviewed ahead quite a bit, I can recall this for ya: Joseph is a weirdo. I think he might be a little, ummm…slow. Or maybe he's just lacking in character development. Which is probably a good thing. If we got to know him really well, we'd probably find that he's a douchebag like the other "heroes" so far.
So grab your NRSV, or look up the text of it online, and let's go!
Chapter 35
1-4
God told Jacob to go to Bethel, settle there, and build an altar to the God who appeared to him when he fled from his brother Esau. So in preparation, he asks all in his household to put away their foreign gods, and he buries them under a tree. Oooh, we actually see a hint of monotheism here. However, the annotations suggest that this story and later parallels "may presuppose a more ancient practice of burial of divine images in sacred places, i.e., by a sacred tree."
5
So God is a terrorist. This should come as no surprise. Jake was scared shitless after the murdering and pillaging that his sons did, and was worried that the people of the land would be after them. But "a terror" from God kept the people from pursuing them. What kind of terror? Did he make Jacob and his family smell really bad or something? What sort of unnamed "terror" was this? I'm gonna assume he told them that Ben Rothlisberger was in town…and nobody wants to get felt up by Ben Rothlisberger.
6-7
The thing to remember here is that he made an altar and called it El-Bethel. Remember how deities in the ancient world had specific manifestations? Remember El-Roi in 16.13? I skipped over the last verse of chapter 33, where Jacob built an altar on the land he bought from Shechem (the rapist)'s father. He named it El-Elohe-Israel (El is the God of Israel). Well this is "El of Bethel". So take note of the worship of El in early Israel. El and YHWH are kinda the same, but kinda not. They're definitely not the same at this point, but of course, we'll talk about this more later on.
9
So here's God appearing to Jacob again. Boy, he sure does appear to people a lot for supposedly being unseen and unseeable. Oh wait…they haven't yet invented the mythology that no one can see God and live. That'll be in Exodus. Getting ahead of myself there.
10
So God names Jacob Israel again. Didn't stick the first time. This time it mostly sticks. He's usually called Israel from here on out. Usually.
11-12
Oh guess what we have here? The promise that we've heard a million times already. I'm starting to think that God his this prerecorded message that he plays whenever one of the patriarchs talks to him.
16-21
So Rachel is about to pop out another kid, and labor isn't going so well. But the midwife told her not to despair because she's about to give birth to another son. How the hell did she know that? Apparently, with her last breath, she named him Ben-oni, which means "son of my sorrow." Geez…real nice name there, Mom. Jacob wasn't havin' it. He renamed him Benjamin.
22-29
Reuben slept with his father's concubine, and Israel heard about it. Oops. Apparently this is a bad thing, because Reuben will be cursed for it. Hmmm. This is reminiscent of the curses on Ham's descendents, and on the Moabites and Ammonites (born to Lot's daughters through incest). It's probably a story – not even fleshed out; consisting of one short verse – thrown in to give the Israelites a reason to exterminate a group of people. Will my prediction be correct? Actually, I'll answer: not in this case. Although, whoever wrote it probably hated the Reubenites. There will be a split between the 12 tribes later, as you may remember. Nothing particularly bad happens to Reuben's descendents…well except for them probably being assimilated out of existence after being conquered by the Assyrians. Getting ahead of myself again.
So the patriarchs of all the 12 tribes have finally all been born! And how Jacob, at the ripe old age of 180, kicks the bucket.
Chapter 36
Boooring. I thought we were done with crap like this. More geneology. It's all about Esau's decendants (Edomites, by the way), and it doesn't even agree with previous lists. Whatevs.
Chapter 37
1-4
So now we meet that weirdo, Joseph. We pick up when he's 17. And here we go playing favorites again. In 37.3, we learn that Israel loves Joseph more than any of his other children. Ok, I get it. If you ask a parent to name their favorite child, most parents will be reluctant to do so, and that's a good thing. Now that doesn't mean parents don't have a favorite child. In fact, if any parent told me that they don't have a favorite child, I'd say it's because they don't know their children very well. You have a favorite child, but I'd say that doesn't justify differential treatment.
Jacob made Joseph a "long robe with sleeves." This is what was translated in the KJV as "coat of many colors." The translation used here is much closer to what the original Hebrew was saying. So there's no Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat…just a robe. Now this was a very regal-looking robe, however, anticipating Joseph's future status.
Of course, Joseph's brothers hated him. He was the obvious favorite.
5-8
Joseph had a dream. In the ancient world that was HUGE. An alarming percentage of people alive today firmly believe that dreams have some kind of supernatural significance. So you know at this time, everybody believed that. He dreamed that he and this brothers were in the field, binding sheaves (bundles of harvested grain stalks), when his sheaf suddenly stood up, and his brothers' sheaves gathered around it and bowed down to it.
And now his brothers hated him even MORE. Not sure what reaction Joseph was expecting here. Really bright idea to tell your brothers who hate you about a dream predicting that they will bow down to you. But he's not done being stupid yet.
9-11
He had another dream where the sun, moon, and 11 stars bow down to him. The 11 stars are obviously his brothers. We can assume that the sun and moon, must mean his mother and father. Even his father was like, "What the dick, man? You even think me and your mom are gonna bow down to your scrawny ass? Nigga, please." And the enmity of his brothers increases. Now even his father is wondering what the hell is wrong with that kid. [Hank Hill voice] "Rachel, that boy ain't right." Except that Rachel is already dead. Oops. This little story is probably part of a narrative that didn't follow an account of Rachel's death.
12-28
Joseph is about to get his comeuppance. (That sentence was really unnecessary…I just wanted to use the word comeuppance) His brothers are tending to the flock, and Jacob sends Joseph out to see if everything is well with them. Poor, blissfully ignorant Joseph. He was probably gonna tell them about the dream where he teabagged all of them. But alas, as soon as they saw him coming, they planned to whack him. Reuben, who still gets cursed later, is the only one who objected to spilling his blood. He suggested that they throw Joseph into a pit. He planned on rescuing Joseph later. So they took off his fancy robe and tossed him in a pit.
Things get foggy here, because it's apparent that several traditions have been mashed together. The brothers conspire to sell him into slavery. But then it says the Midianites found Joseph, pulled him out of the pit, and they sold him to the Ishmaelites, who then took him to Egypt. But later Joseph said his brothers sold him. And later, both the Midianites and the Ishmaelites will be identified as the people who sold him to the Egyptians. Whatevs.
29-36
Reuben comes back to the pit, and of course Joseph is gone. Fuck. He basically asked his brothers what the hell he's supposed to do now, which I guess means he had to tell them of his plan to rescue Joseph later…which makes me wonder why they didn't dump HIS bitch ass in the pit, because isn't he the most likely candidate to rat them out?! Whatevs. So they take Joseph's robe and cover it in goat blood, and show that to Jacob. Jacob is predictably inconsolable. He wouldn't stop bemoaning the death of his favorite son, and said "…I shall go down to Sheol to my son, mourning." This is where the dead go in Judaism…the righteous AND the wicked. That's right. In Judaism, you don't go to heaven if you're good, or hell if you're bad. Heaven is where God is; it is for the divine only (and a few select mortals, as we shall see), and Sheol is where the dead are. The idea that good people go to heaven and bad people go to hell is some more junk from that fan-fiction we know as Christianity. Sheol is NOT the same as the Christian hell. I'll quote professor James D. Tabor:
"The ancient Hebrews had no idea of an immortal soul living a full and vital life beyond death, nor of any resurrection or return from death. Human beings, like the beasts of the field, are made of "dust of the earth," and at death they return to that dust (Gen. 2:7; 3:19).
…This idea of Sheol is negative in contrast to the world of life and light above, but there is no idea of judgment or of reward and punishment. If one faces extreme circumstances of suffering in the realm of the living above, as did Job, it can even be seen as a welcome relief from pain–see the third chapter of Job. But basically it is a kind of "nothingness," an existence that is barely existence at all, in which a "shadow" or "shade" of the former self survives (Ps. 88:10)."
Joseph was sold to the Egyptian pharaoh's captain of the guard, Potiphar, and this is where his story fleshes out.
Chapter 38
Genesis goes off on a little tangent to talk about Judah before continuing with Joseph's story. Hopefully, you recognize the name as one of Jacob's sons, and patriarch of the Tribe of Judah, which was the lead tribe of the later Kingdom of Judah.
1-12
Judah had 3 sons: Er, Onan, and Shelah. Judah found a wife for Er, his firstborn; she was Tamar, the black widow. At least, that's what I'm gonna call her.
Apparently, Er was wicked in the sight of the lord and put him to death. I wonder how? What was the method of killing God used? Did he come down and do this personally? Did Er have an "unfortunate accident"? God generally acts like a mob boss anyway, so we'll assume the latter. What was Er's crime? What made him so wicked? These are important questions, actually. I don't mean for my humor to trivialize this, but seriously; if this God character can just kill us for being "wicked," it sure would be nice to tell us what the hell was Er's major malfunction so we can avoid his fate…right?
At this time, it was customary for a brother to sire a male descendent for his deceased brother. So Judah asked this of Onan. But since he knew that the child would not be his, Onan pulled out and spilled his semen on the ground. God didn't like that, so he killed him. This little story has caused quite a bit of untold misery in the Christian world. It's used to justify condemnation of both masturbation AND birth control. This is ridiculous, because it's very apparent from the story that God was angry that he refused to give his brother offspring. Onan wasn't jacking off, he was pulling out. And it doesn't even suggest there's anything wrong with pulling out as a method of birth control in general; God was just condemning this particular situation, where Onan is shirking his duty as a brother.
And since I've determined that 2,000 words is about as long as I should make these, lest people complain about the length, I better stop here and continue with Judah's story next time.
I am actually interested in seeing the development of the monotheistic god in the Bible. I hope you cover it. :)
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