There are some interesting milestones in chapter 38 in the story of Judah and his household. First, God kills his first son because he’s wicked. I believe this is the first time we see God strike down a member of Abraham’s line. I guess maybe each of the twelve sons only has a twelfth as much of a blessing as their father. Then his widow is married to Judah’s middle son, but he dies too, more on that in a moment. Judah promises her his youngest son once he’s old enough to marry, but he doesn’t really mean it because he’s afraid she’s cursed or something so he just sends her home and forgets about her.
Once the youngest son is old enough to marry, she finds out she was lied to and dresses up like a prostitute in Timnah where she knows Judah is going to be. He propositions her, which I guess was her plan all along, and offers her a small goat from his flock for payment, leaving some of his effects with her as collateral.
She gets pregnant and Judah hears that his daughter in law is having a baby from prostituting herself so he demands she be killed. She confronts him with the proof that he was the one who impregnated her, so he lets her off the hook and marries her to his son after all. There must be some cultural assumptions there that elude me because no part of that story makes any sense to me. Did she know Judah had an overwhelming desire for sex workers? Did she intend everything to go that way? Why didn’t she confront Judah sooner in Timnah? Why does Judah spare her when she proves it was him who got her pregnant? I mean it’s not like it changes any of the reasons he wanted her killed to begin with. Maybe you just had to be there.
Judah’s middle son was named Onan, like from Onanism or the sin of Onan, which means masturbation. Now the theory goes that God was so disgusted with Onan’s spilling his seed on the ground that he smote him, so you shouldn’t play with yourself or God might just smite you too.
But the twist is that Onan wasn’t even masturbating, God took issue with his pulling out so his new wife wouldn’t get pregnant. He wasn’t spilling his seed on the ground just for fun, he was doing it for political reasons. His first son would actually be his older brother’s heir, so he threw a tantrum and decided he’d rather have no heirs at all than have his first son belong to his dead brother under the law. The text specifically says that God thought it was a jerk move to deny his dead brother an heir; that’s why He killed Onan. It baffles me how some of these old ideas came about. I mean how can you read that and take away “God hates it when you masturbate?” I guess that’s what we get for allowing ourselves to be spoon fed the Bible by people with agendas.
Meanwhile, Joseph is bought by Potipher, who works for the Pharaoh. God favors him on Joseph’s behalf and all his business runs smoothly. Potipher recognizes that this success has something to do with Joseph so he keeps promoting him and giving him more responsibilities and privileges until he’s basically second in command around the household. Potiphar’s wife takes a shine to Joseph and when he won’t sleep with her, she accuses him of trying to rape her so he gets thrown in prison.
In prison, the whole scenario starts again from the beginning. The jailer sees that everything Joseph touches works out well so he keeps promoting him and putting him in charge of other prisoners. Eventually he is put in charge of two guys from the Pharaoh’s personal court and he interprets a couple dreams for them. The cup-bearer’s dream says he’s going to be reinstated in the court so Joseph asks him to mention Joseph’s case to the Pharaoh since he never actually did anything wrong, and the cup-bearer agrees. Then he does get reinstated and promptly forgets all about Joseph. Bummer.
No comments:
Post a Comment