I'm back! I've decided that I'm gonna have to hijack Mondays from working any job so that I can get down to business with the Bible blog. I've had a few readers encourage me to start back up, but I've been working way too much. I'm gonna fix that so that we can get a move on. The juicy part really begins at Exodus. But first, let's give a quick treatment to the last 5 chapters of Genesis. I'll try to keep this short since we're just now jumping back into this. Don't wanna lose your attention already.
So grab your NRSV and let's pick up where we left off. At the end of chapter 45, Jacob (Israel) learns that his long lost favorite son Joseph is alive and doing quite well for himself in Egypt. So they loaded up the wagons and they moved Goshen…Egypt, that is…swimmin' pools…movie stars.
46.1-4
1When Israel set out on his journey with all that he had and came to Beer-sheeba, he offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac.
Take a look at the way this is worded: "he offered sacrifices to the God of his father…" It's worded that way because this is the specific god at Beer-sheeba who told Isaac to stay in the land (26.2-3). Remember, these people are pagans. They believe that different gods and different incarnations of gods are tied to specific areas. This is nothing new if you remember what we talked about during the story of young Jacob (now called Israel…occasionally). Remember El-Roi and El-Bethel? These are incarnations of El at specific places. So this verse is pointing out that this is the same god that spoke to Isaac at this location.
To reiterate the pagan idea of gods being specific to locations, El tells Israel "I myself will go down with you…" He has to tell him this because people believed that when you leave a god's specific territory, he cannot protect you. That is why El assures Israel that he will go to Egypt with him.
5-27
So Jacob continues on to Egypt, and here we have a listing of the Israelites. Keep in mind the term "Israelites" does have a specific meaning: the descendents of Israel (Jacob). So they list all the people, ending up with the traditional number, 70. We will see this number again. So it's probably not coincidence that the number of Israelites is exactly 70.
46.28 - 47.12
Oh, by the way, that famine is still going on. And sadly, even my favorite character in the Bible is still kind of a dick. We've already seen him profit off the starving people of the world. Remember that during the "seven years of plenty" he went all over the kingdom collecting food? Then when they came to him starving he got rich by selling the food to them? Yeah. He's not done raping them.
So Joseph settles the Israelites in the best part of the land of Egypt, as per Pharaoh's instructions. And he gives them all the food they need. In the meantime, he and Pharaoh are still getting rich making everyone else pay for food. So apparently "Joseph collected all the money to be found in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan, in exchange for the grain that they bought…" Uh huh. Yeah. Now if this doesn't scream 'tall tale', I don't know what does. He collected all the money in Egypt and Canaan…you have to admit that that is ridiculous. Hopefully your bullshit detector went off there.
So the Egyptians came to Joseph and were all like, "Feed us, man! We're starving and we have no money! You literally have all the freakin' money in the entire land! Are you gonna just let us die in the streets?
And Joseph was like, "You still got livestock don't you? Hand it over, and I'll give you some food."
Joseph, you asshole. My criticism is not that Joseph isn't a perfect person. No one is. (And unfortunately, the very ordinary observation that nobody is perfect is one of religion's main psychological holds on believers) My point is that his god is apparently ok with it. Yeah, kill Onan for pulling out but let Joseph run a food racket on the entire land. We'll come back to this. I've heard arguments against my reasoning in this paragraph that I need to counter, but we'll do that later. There are FAR more egregious instances of what god punishes vs. what god doesn't punish, and I want to get to those before I give this topic a full treatment.
47.29
Israel makes Joseph promise to not bury him in Egypt, but at the ancestral burial plot that Abraham bought from the Hittites. Let's pause to highlight one of my favorite aspects of Bronze Age cultures in this area: swearing on another man's testicles. These people felt that reproductive organs were downright sacred, so it was just like putting your hand on a Bible. I think we should bring this back. When you take an oath in court, you should have to hold the testicles of the judge. "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help my balls?"
Chapter 48
So Israel has fallen sick and knows his time is near. Joseph comes to him with his two sons. Israel tells him how god (specifically El Shaddai, by the way) appeared to him promising more stuff. Y'know, the same boring you're gonna have tons of decedents, they'll have their own land, etc. Since his descendants will be the recipients of god's promise, he takes this opportunity to adopt Joseph's sons that were born to him during his time in Egypt.
5Therefore your two sons, who were born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you in Egypt, are now mine; Ephraim and Manasseh shall be mine, just as Reuben and Simeon are.
So these grandsons were elevated in status and each will be the patriarch of a tribe, just like Israel's sons. So there are actually 13 tribes of Israel. Israel asked Joseph to bring his sons closer so that he may give them his blessing. Joseph presented them so that Manasseh, the firstborn, was on Israel's right and Ephraim was on his left. But when blessing them, Joseph crossed his hands over before putting his hands on their heads and blessing them. Joseph noticed this and said "Not so, my father! Since this one is the firstborn, put your right hand on his head." Israel basically said, "STFU, I know what I'm doing." He said that the younger Ephraim would be greater than Manasseh. This echoes the story of Jacob's ascendancy over Esau. The annotations tell us, "…this section may intend to predict the Ephraimite Jeroboam's ascendancy over the Northern Kingdom.
Is it just me, or is it that every time a younger son does better than the firstborn, the authors have to make up some bullshit to explain/justify it? Let's come back to this in a moment.
Chapter 49
Ok, you should probably read this chapter before I discuss it. It is a poem that Israel speaks as his deathbed blessing to all his sons. But it appears to be more of a "prediction" of the fates of the tribes of Israel rather than a blessing. As you may have guessed from my quotes, this is a part that was almost assuredly written by one of the later writers. But this writer is not P, who is the most recent writer in the Documentary Hypothesis, and is a prime suspect for later events that are inserted to be passed off as prophecy. We'll talk about how we know this in a minute. But on to the poem…
So first, Reuben gets put in his place because he banged his father's concubine. Heh…they're Eskimo brothers.
Next up, Simeon and Levi get their comeuppance for what they did to Shechem. Finally, some justice! Remember when these two assholes had all the men in Shechem circumcised, then when they were all in pain, slaughtered them all? Yeah, well here…mum, well this is supposed to be a deathbed blessing, so what is this…a deathbed cursing? So Israel lets them know that their descendants won't fare well. Except that the Levites totally fared well. They were one of the most important tribes, because they were the priests!
Judah seems to get the better part of Israel's blessing, and as you may know, this predicts the prominent position the tribe of Judah will take. I mean, the words Jew and Judaism come from this tribe's name. However, the second part verse 10 seems to, "predict rule for Judean royalty until Judah's Davidic descendants achieve universal domination." As you may know, that certainly didn't happen. That's how we know that this was written by one of the mostly unknown redactors. This had to have been written before the Babylonian exile, so it couldn't have been P.
So let's look at the whole firstborn problem. Remember Jacob and Esau? Esau came out first, but Jacob was holding onto his ankle. This was taken as a sign that Jacob was gonna be the favorite son. Then Israel prophecies (or causes, depending on how you look at it) that Ephraim will be the more successful son. And here we have Judah getting the better blessing because his 3 older brothers fucked up. Ancient cultures considered firstborn sons to be big fucking deals. But we all know that's bullshit. There's nothing mystical about being the oldest male child. But at the time, the eldest son got the best birthright and generally was considered to have a sort of familial jurisdiction over his other siblings. So what it looks like is that every time a firstborn son actually turned out to be a loser (or at the very least, less successful than a younger sibling), there must be some mystical magical reason for it. Remember, magical thinking permeated every aspect of existence for these people. So they made up stories like how Jacob stole Esau's birthright, and Reuben sleeping with his father's concubine (remember how this was like a two sentence anecdote which seemed to be thrown in as an afterthought?), and Simeon and Levi's dirty deed. It's almost certain than none of those things happened. There's no possible way the authors could have even known. They may not have created the stories themselves; it's possible that they were part of different oral traditions. But they stories are probably myths because for this culture, if the firstborn son wasn't the preeminent one, there must be a reason. So they told stories that included reasons.
The middle kids get shitty poetic predictions, uhh blessings rather. Whatevs.
Joseph gets a long blessing with a happy ending. In fact, the editors note that this, "suggest[s] that he may have been the original focus of the early blessing." Remember, this is the work of a later redactor, and it does appear that the poem was modified to fit in the narrative context of this story in Genesis. In other words, it was probably written as a poem on its own much later than the events of Genesis, but inserted as a deathbed blessing/prediction spoken by Israel to his sons.
After this Israel dies, and Joseph keeps his testicle-bound promise to take bury him in the ancestral burial plot. Believe it or not, Jewish and Muslim archaeologists are still trying to find/fighting over where they believe Abraham is (and of course, Isaac and Israel are) buried.
Chapter 50
Joseph buries Israel. Joseph dies.
And that's it for Genesis! Now the real fun begins. In Exodus is where Judaism is really created. The worship of El fades into the background and YHWH is created…well, borrowed. We'll talk about El, YHWH, and Baal at length in due time.
