Joseph’s Coat
Genesis 37:1 to 39:1
37:1 After Yahweh officially changed Jacob’s name to Israel the chosen family continued to live on in Canaan. Thanks to all of the productive time he had spent playing humpy the camel with his wives and their maid slaves, Israel had 12 boys. By far his favorite son was Little Joe.
Israel encouraged Joe to spy on his 11 brothers. Dad did other things that resulted in Joe being despised by his brothers as well, like when he made Joe an amazingly expensive and flashy multi-colored coat. The other boys totally hated Joe's guts because he was always sneaking around and taking notes on them, and snitching about everything they did to their dad. They hated his gaudy jacket too. The brothers tended to treat Joe like the spoiled brat that he was.
Joe had a dream one night that some day he would totally be the boss over his brothers and he told them so. Well that hardly helped endear them to the little snot. Then later he dreamed that even the moon and stars up in the sky started bowing down to him and obeying his every command. He told the weird sky dream to his father and Israel said "What the? What is this crap? You little megalomaniac twerp, you can't boss around me and your mother young man!"
One day the brothers (except for Joe) were working hard, busily tending the herds and doing various herd tending type stuff, when Israel sent Joe out there to spy on them again. Now it’s hard to be sneaky in bright one-of-a-kind apparel so technicolor dream boy was spotted lurking about and the brothers decided they had enough. They started making plans to kill him. Reuban at least had the decency to speak up on Joe's behalf. "No no guys, we can’t just murder the kid outright. Let's just put him in a deep pit somewhere and let him starve to death. That way it won’t technically be our fault, by some twisted sense of logic." This all sounded quite reasonable for some reason so they tore off Joe’s new coat and threw him down in a pit, and went off to have dinner. While they were chowing down on some grub around the campfire, a spice caravan came by winding its way towards Egypt. Judah said "You know, it’s kind of a waste of a perfectly good humanoid, letting Joe die in a pit like that. Let's sell him into slavery and split the money instead!" So they sold Joe for a handful of loose change to the camel riders.
Reuban had been away from camp while Joe was being sold into slavery and when he returned and found out, he was outraged. He was so mad he tore his clothes. With no dead body to show, what would they tell Dad happened to Joe? They could hardly say he fell in a pit and died without a body. Selling Joe had really complicated things. They had to tell their dad something so they took Joe's coat and smeared it up with lots of goat blood, and brought it to Israel saying "We found this unique fancy schmancy coat, what do you think, could it be Joe's? Kind of bloody innit." Israel screamed "Aaiiiiiiiiiii, some vicious animal has obviously eaten my little Joey! And ruined this nice coat!" He tore off his clothes and put on an old sack and cried for days, as was the custom. Meanwhile the camel jockeys sold Joe to a guy in Egypt named Potiphar, the captain of Pharaoh's guard.
38:1 Meanwhile back at the ranch, another one of Israel's sons, Judah, took to boinking some Canaanite woman and with her had 3 sons. Their names were Er, Onan and Shelah. Judah acquired a lovely wife for Er named Tamar. Yahweh didn't like Er for some reason, who knows why, maybe just his name. Anyway, Yahweh simply up and killed him dead. This left the Er family dynasty without an heir because Yahweh didn't even give poor Er time to get Tamar knocked up.
Judah ordered Onan to go get his dead brother's wife pregnant, as was the custom. Onan didn't want to get Tamar pregnant because the child wouldn't legally be his own so when it came time to perform his duty he instead indulged himself with the old babylonian handshake. As a result, his sperm splattered on the desert sand instead of a more fertile delta. This majorly angered Yahweh which of course was never difficult to do. Maybe this time it was because Onan had disobeyed his father, Yahweh hates that. Maybe it was because he practiced birth control, apparently Yahweh is sensitive on that topic too. Maybe it was because he adamed without eve, rained on his own ark, babelled his own tower, sodomed his own gomorrah. Yahweh clearly has sexual issues. Anyway Yahweh up and killed him dead.
Judah was running out of sons fast so he decided to hold off breeding his third son with Tamar for fear that Yahweh might kill him for god only knows why. It was such a crap shoot with this god guy any more, why chance it?
Later, after Judah's own wife had died and he was sufficiently and appropriately over it, he went out to the field to check on his sheepherders. Tamar sneakily followed him out there with a veil hiding her face. When Judah saw her following he naturally just assumed she was a woman for hire. He went to her and said "Hey there little lady, nice ankles. How about you and me play snake and apple?" She could tell that he didn't recognize her and played up the prostitute angle. "How much will you pay?" He answered "How about one young goat." Well in spite of a healthy bulge he obviously didn’t have a goat in his pocket and wanted this dance on credit. She said "How about some collateral until you can deliver on the goat?" So Judah gave her his personal ring and bracelets, and yes, his staff.
Judah had a quickie with Tamar without realizing that she was his daughter-in-law, even though she had lived in his house for many years and even though he had attempted to breed her to a couple of his sons, getting them killed in the process.
Judah eventually sent someone to deliver the goat and retrieve the other stuff but the lady of negotiable affections was nowhere to be found. Judah just sort of shrugged it off and forgot about it. A few months later Judah was told that not only did Tamar have an unleavened bun in the oven but worse, it was the product of that dreadfully doubled standard, sluttery. Judah responded "Bring the sleazy little ho out here right now. Let's kill her AND the fetus, and burn both the bodies to a crisp, as is the custom.”
When Tamar was brought before Judah, along with her new baby bump she displayed all the jewelry and the staff and said "These things belong to the father. He owes me a goat." Judah was stunned. He said "Oh you clever, clever girl, you are better than me you are so, so clever. I wouldn't let you have sex with my third son after the disaster with my first two sons but you cleverly finagled a way to get some of our family jam into your biscuit. That was so brilliant. I have so much respect. I am so crushing on you right now."
As it turned out, thanks to Judah’s jam Tamar had twins. During delivery a hand came poking out of the baby tunnel and the nurse tied a red thread around the wrist as it waved hello. The threaded baby pulled his hand back inside and the other boy was born first, making for a lively academic debate as to which child should be considered the oldest.
39:1 Shifting back to the main story, Yahweh kept track of Joe in Egypt. Joe was actually doing quite well for himself. In fact, he was somehow making a profitable business out of being a slave. That was most unusual and his master could see that it was only because Yahweh had pulled some strings. It’s definitely who you know. Joe became his master’s number one slave-trustee. Things were looking good but then once again, as has repeatedly been the case over and over in these accounts of the affairs of the world, a woman brought shame and corruption to the otherwise proper intentions of men.
The master's wife wanted Joe's young body in the worse way. She lusted after his manhood all the time. All she could think about was young hot Joey’s yum yum body. Whenever they were alone together, which was a lot, she would get all worked up into a sweaty frenzy and try everything she could think of to arouse him. One day when they were alone together she just went bat guano crazy. "Oh Joe, please, just once! Just give me a peek at the little pharaoh." She moaned loudly as she tore off part of his shirt. At first he just stood there like the cover of a cheap novel. "Are you trying to seduce me Mrs. Potiphar?" Joe speculated and then declared "How could I do such an immoral thing? Never!" He squirmed away from her as she ripped away the rest of his shirt and he ran off crying his poor little eyes out. Joe should definitely not have left her holding his shredded shirt as evidence. Big mistake.
