genesis, chapter 41

Well, there's lots more crazy dreams and poor management decisions in this chapter. In other news, God is a sadistic prick. But you already knew that, didn't you?

So we start off with the Pharoah having a restless night of sleep. He's dreaming about skinny cows eating fat cows and scraggly stalks of wheat eating healthy stalks of wheat, and he's all upset because he doesn't know what this means, and neither do any of his magicians. I think maybe Pharoah is concentrating too much on meaning. Maybe he should start keeping a dream journal. It has helped me have more vivid dreams. I still don't know what it means when I see my yoga teacher beating up two hoodlums outside the Verizon store before playing a winner-takes-all game of Sonic the Hedgehog, but I've been able to enjoy this kind of dream more since I started recording all of my dreams.

Anyway, all of a sudden the cupbearer's like, "Ooh, I totally forgot this promise I made to this guy in prison who interpreted my dream and got me released from prison." Like, it's only probably the most important thing that has happened to you in the last two years, guy. Did you just forget that you were in prison? Or did you maybe think you were still in prison?

The best part is that this guy is telling the Pharoah about how he got imprisoned and freed, and how the baker was imprisoned and then killed, as though the Pharoah had nothing to do with it. Like, I don't expect the Pharoah to remember every servant he's had imprisoned or killed, but I just love that the cupbearer tiptoes around it while at the same time making it blatant:

"I was restored to my position, and the other man was hanged [or impaled]." (41:13)

Like he was somehow restored to his position organically, without the interference of any person, and like maybe the baker just sort of got hanged (or impaled), without anyone actually performing the hanging (or impaling). I mean, I guess he's trying to be diplomatic, but why mention the baker at all? It seems like it's kind of in bad taste, is all.

Joseph is summoned, and he pulls his old "Only God can interpret your dreams. I'll interpret your dreams" routine. He explains that the dreams mean that Egypt will have seven years of prosperity, followed by seven years of famine. The dreams were God's way of telling Pharoah about the famine, but it's kind of unclear why He bothered. As Joseph says, God has already decided to cause a famine that will "ravage the land" (41:30), but then he also apparently decided to tell Pharoah about it.

Well, it seems to me that there are only two reasons why God would want the Pharoah to know about the famine. The first is that He wants to warn Pharoah so that Pharoah can take early action to lessen the ill effects of the famine. Pharoah operates with this assumption in mind, and takes action to store food during the period of abundance so they will have plenty during the famine.

But if God were really concerned about Pharoah and the Egyptians he could just not cause a famine. It isn't like when I warn someone that their kid is about to run onto the subway tracks. God is causing the famine. He can stop it from happening, so there is no point in warning someone about it. If You're worried about them, God, just don't cause a famine.

So, obviously God isn't trying to warn them, which brings us to the other reason Someone would tell someone else about something bad that is going to happen: God is a dick. Not only is He's causing a famine, He's telling Pharoah about it ahead of time, so that Pharoah has seven years to worry about the inevitable, while simultaneously knowing that nothing he could ever do will prevent it. God is inciting fear and desperation, not to gain obedience or respect or power, but just because he can. I guess what I'm saying is that God is a terrorist.

The Pharoah, seeing how wise Joseph is (based on a five-minute interaction during which all Joseph did was interpret Pharoah's dreams), decides to put him in charge of Egypt. Yeah, you read that right. Joseph is in charge of Egypt. Just like that. How did this guy ever get to be Pharoah if he makes important management decisions like this so rashly? I mean, it turns out okay, but does this guy make all his hiring decisions this way? Actually, now that I think about it, I think this is how Tony Snow got hired: Bush was like, "I had this kooky dream," and then Karl Rove said, "That reminds me: this guy I was in prison with was really good at interpreting dreams." And the rest is history. Even so, Tony Snow is just a spokesperson. Joseph basically became president of Egypt based on a split-second decision.

Anyway, Joseph spends the seven years of abundance collecting grain (and cows, I guess?) from the towns in Egypt and storing it away somewhere. Now, I don't know a lot about storing and eating grain, but would it really last in storage for fourteen years? I find it hard to believe that the grain wasn't ravaged by mold and bacteria by the time the famine happened. But, like I said, I'm clearly not as knowledgeable about grain as Joseph is. So when the famine arrives, everyone's hungry, and the Pharoah sends the people to Joseph who sells the food to the people. Now, unless Joseph grew all of this food by himself on his own land, I don't see how it's exactly fair to sell it to the people. They grew it, and donated it to this government famine relief program, and now they have to pay in order to get their own food back? I mean, if they were going to just have to buy it back anyway, why couldn't they have kept all the food and stored it themselves?

Also, where are these people supposed to get money during the famine? This is an agriculture-based economy, Joseph. God, what a dick.

genesis, chapter 40

Man, Whoever wrote this chapter needs a lesson in economy of words. Like, I realize the copy I have now is an updated version of a translated version of the original text, but it really reads like the Author was just trying to fill out His word count, but didn't really have much to say. Maybe He was writing on a deadline, and this was His last chapter to finish and He was just really tired or something. I don't know, but I do know that it would be a journalism professor's worst nightmare:

...the cupbearer and the baker of the king of Egypt offended their master, the king of Egypt. (40:1)

Okay. So the cupbearer and the baker made their boss, the king of Egypt mad. Got it.

Pharoah was angry with his two officials, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker (40:2)

Erm...all right. He's, uh...still mad at those same guys.

and put them in custody in the house of the captain of the guard, in the same prison where Joseph was confined. (40:3)

Right. Okay. The Pharoah put them in prison. What happened next?

After they had been in custody for some time, each of the two men--the cupbearer and the baker of the king of Egypt, who were being held in prison--(40:4-5)

Dude! We got it. Two guys, a cupbearer and a baker, who work for the king, made him mad and got sent to prison! You already said it, like, eight times in the first paragraph of this chapter. Message received, okay?

Then again, "cupbearer" has nine letters, and "chief cupbearer" has fourteen letters (fifteen if you count the space), and when you're just looking to fill up space with drivel, long words always help.

Anyway, Joseph meets these guys and they look sad:

So he asked Pharoah's officials who were in custody with him in his master's house

Wait, wait, wait. Who was in prison? The Pharoah's...? Huh? I am totally lost here.

I mean, I have to admit that I am one of those people who can never remember characters' names in books and movies, and I'm always trying to figure out who the hell the characters are talking about when they refer to other characters. But come on. This is a little excessive. We aren't stupid. At least, I'm not stupid. I think we've pretty well established that people in biblical times were very stupid. I mean, they didn't even have toaster ovens. God! Get with the times, guys.

After all this unnecessary clarification the two dudes tell Joe that they each had a dream, but they are sad that no one can interpret them. In one breath, Joseph says that only God can make such interpretations, and then offers to interpret the dreams himself. Or maybe he just meant that the guys should tell him their dreams, and then he can tell God (because God is with him in prison, remember?), and then God will interpret them and he can tell the interpretation to the guys. Or maybe Joseph is just a crazy idiot.

The cupbearer has a dream about vines and grapes, which isn't surprising, considering his whole life is spent serving wine. Based on some rudimentary internet dream interpretation, I would say that the dream means the the cupguy will be healthy for a long time to come and will regain favor in the king's eyes, after which he will become prosperous, but that his only ambition will be to be true to his master, which is actually pretty close to what Joseph predicts, although he says this will all happen within three days. Cupguy is happy about this, and Joseph asks Cupguy to promise that when he gets out of prison he will tell his master, the Pharoah, who is the king of Egypt and master of the two men in jail, the cupbearer and the baker, that Joseph was good and should be let out of prison, where he, Joseph, is right now (in prison, that is). The cupbearer, who is in prison with Joseph, promises to tell the Pharoah about Joseph.

The baker dreams about (surprise!) bread in baskets, and birds that keep eating the bread. My interpretation of this is that the baker will be miserable after being cast out and treated inhumanely by someone in a position of power. Of course, if this dream were occurring in the 21st century, that could mean lots of things. If a prisoner had this dream, it might mean that he would be put in solitary confinement or tortured in some other way. But if a co-worker were telling me this dream (and if I believed that dreams could predict events in a person's life), I might think that the boss would publicly humiliate and then fire the person. The one thing I would probably never come up with from this interpretation would be that the person would be hanged or impaled on a pole, because those are things that don't often happen in 21st century America. But that is exactly what Joseph predicts.

This is not too different from "hot" psychic readings. Joseph already has some information about this guy before he even hears the dream: he works for the king and he's in prison for doing something bad to the king. Joseph also knows the standard contemporary forms of punishment. If Joseph had told the baker that he was going to be fried in the electric chair, that really would have been an astounding prediction. But I guess people interpret dreams based on the current social customs and mores, kind of like the way people interpret the Bible.

Before the existence of venture capital, for example, no one would have thought to interpret the Parable of the Talents as an endorsement of venture capitalism, but now some do interpret it that way. For that very reason, we can not help but admit that the Bible does not have all the answers. I mean, come on; that's a tall order for any book. The only way The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy could accomplish this feat was to take up several buildings' worth of space. There are lots of things that exist now that the Bible doesn't mention at all, and that's because a lot has changed between 5000 B.C.E. and 2007 C.E., both in terms of technology and morality. In moderns societies, we don't impale people on stakes, because it's seen as cruel and immoral. But Biblical people didn't have much of a problem with it, did they?

But I digress.

Joseph's predictions do indeed come true. Three days later, both dudes are released, the cupebearer is restored to his original position, and the baker is either hanged or impaled on a stake. My translation isn't sure which.

And then comes the most flagrant unnecessary clarification of the chapter, which reads like a middle schooler's attempt to be poignant or poetic:

The chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph; he forgot him.(40:23)

Man, You could have made the chapter a whole lot longer if You used this technique throughout:

Joseph did not ignore the dreams; he interpreted them.
Joseph was not free; he was in prison.
Joseph did not say, "My brothers sold me into slavery because I liked to dream, and then my dad tore his clothes because they told him I died. Also, God is with me"; he said, "Do not interpretations belong to God? Tell me your dreams."

I guess I should just be happy that He used the semicolon properly.

genesis, chapter 39

Wow. I've read some boring Bible passages, but this one was one of the worst. The only good thing I can say about Genesis 39 is that it's short. Short and stupid.

Ostensibly, the lesson of this chapter is that if someone is with the LORD (whatever that means), he will do well in all of his endeavors. Whether that means being head slave for the Egyptian ruler or being in charge of the other inmates in prison, God helps his own. I mean, sure, I suppose he could free Joseph from slavery or from prison, but, I mean, well...why the crap doesn't God just free Joseph? If my best friend were the all-powerful creator of the universe, I would be pretty pissed that he can't even spring me from the joint after I was wrongly accused of attempting to "know" (in the Biblical sense) my boss's wife.

When [Joseph's] master saw that the LORD was with [Joseph] and that the LORD gave [Joseph] success in everything he did, Joseph found favor in his eyes and became his attendant. (39:2-4)

But while Joseph was there in the prison, the LORD was with him; he showed him kindness and granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden. (39:21)

Gee, thanks, LORD. This is another of those instances where God's either impotent or mean. Like, if he's so buddy-buddy with Joseph, why doesn't He just make him ruler or Egypt or something? Why doesn't He, like, give him magical powers and, I don't know, make him not a slave? Unless He can't. Maybe God just doesn't have the same influence here that he had back in Dothan and Edom. Like, the Egyptians obviously respect him, and they respect his opinion of Joseph, but they aren't willing to overturn their local laws just because God said so.

What I want to know is, where are the floods? Where are the plagues? And I think Joseph ought to be asking the same questions. I mean, if God isn't willing to pull out the big guns in Joseph's defense, why should Joseph stay friends with this Guy?

Also in this chapter, Joseph comes so close to making an actual moral decision, but mucks it up by bringing God into it. What happens is that Joe, as noted above, finds favor in Potiphar's eyes, so Pot brings Joseph into his home and basically puts him in charge of the place. He's still a slave, mind you, but he is fed, and looked after, and treated with respect and kindness. And then one day, Potiphar's wife invites Joe to bed. He refuses:

"With me in charge," he told her, "my master does not concern himself with anything in the house; everything he owns he has entrusted to my care. No one is greater in this house than I am. My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing...?" (39:8-9)

Wow. Someone in the Bible is showing actual compassion for another human being? Seriously? Maybe I had these guys all wrong. Maybe Joseph recognizes the pain he would cause by sleeping with his master's wife. Maybe he can sympathize with the pain Potiphar would feel when he realized that both his closest confidant and his wife betrayed his trust. Maybe he's not such a bad--oh, wait. There's more to that last line: "'How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?'" (Emphasis mine.)

I guess this is why modern sexual ethics are so fucked up. According to the Bible, having sex with your friend's wife isn't wrong because it hurts your friend, but because it makes God cry. I guess, concievably, if you belived that God was encouraging you to steal your friend's wife, that would make it okay, right? No matter what the real world consequences are, as long as you believe God approves, you think you're acting morally. Well, guess what? Morality isn't that simple. Actual morality relflects an obligation to other persons, not to an abstract entity with moral standards we can all agree are shaky at best. Not that I expected anything else from the Bible.

One last thing: presumably the Egyptians are less sexist than the Wherever-the-heck-Joseph's-from-ians, since they accepted Potiphan's wife's word over Joe's. I sure hope Joseph subjugates them and teaches them the way to treat their women properly, i.e., like property.