But it turns out that Joseph really was better than everybody else.
He was taken to Egypt as a penniless slave and within a few years, he was practically running the place.
The Pharaoh had a disturbing dream in which seven plump cows emerged from the Nile and devoured seven skinny cows. Joseph explained that this meant that Egypt would have seven years of bumper crops, followed by seven years of famine. The Pharaoh put Joseph in charge of the Department of Agriculture and due to his unorthodox strategy of planning the Egyptian economy around the Pharaoh’s dreams, Egypt was spared from a horrible famine.
Not one to hold a grudge, Joseph wrote to his brothers, telling them to come live in Egypt where he was a big shot and they’d have plenty to eat. The dream had come true. His brothers would be bowing down to him, after all.
As humiliating as that was, though, it was less embarrassing than starving to death. So the brothers packed up and moved to Egypt and the descendants of the of the twelve brothers would go on to become the twelve tribes of Israel.
God had made a nation out of Abraham’s ninety-year old loins. Now even when he got disgusted with the human race, there would still be one group of people he could hang out with. “A few friends I can count on,” God told himself. “That’s all I need.”
Exodus
When the Pharaoh saw all these Israelites living in Egypt, he thought, “Holy shit! We’ve got an illegal alien problem.”
So the Pharaoh enslaved God’s chosen people and put them to work picking green beans, framing houses and things like that. Not wanting her son to grow up as a slave, one lady put her baby in straw basket and released it into the Nile River. The Pharaoh’s daughter stumbled upon the basket while she was out swimming. She later adopted the boy and named him Moses.
As Moses grew up, he went to the best schools, ate the best food, played with the best dogs, and generally lived the good life. All of which was built upon the misery of an army of slaves. But then one day he learned the awful truth:
he wasn’t a blue-blooded Egyptian at all. In fact, he was the son of illegal aliens. Having learned of how he came to be in the Pharaoh’s family, it occurred to Moses that the only thing that separated him from the slaves being whipped outside the palace was a basket ride. This realization caused an existential crisis in Moses.
He turned his back on his adopted family, his country club and all his yuppie friends, and went into the desert to sort things out.
While in the desert, God appeared to Moses in the form of a burning bush and told him to go free his fellow Israelites from slavery. When a flaming shrub tells you to do something, you do it.
Moses returned to Egypt, demanding the release of all the Israelite slaves. The Pharaoh thought his radicalized grandson was just going through a phase. That if he just held out long enough, Moses would shave off his beard and the Che Guevara poster would come down off the wall, and everything would go back to normal. But Moses was serious, and so was God, a point he drove home by turning the Nile River into blood, creating swarms of frogs and giving everyone skin boils. In light of these horrors, the Pharaoh offered to let the Israelites go, but only if they left their cattle and sheep behind. This wasn’t good enough for Moses, as he knew this meant a future without jerky or leather furniture. So to raise the stakes, Moses summoned the Angel of Death.
That night, the Israelites covered their door frames with lamb’s blood, so the Angel of Death would know to pass over their house and to move on to the neighbors, where he would kill their first-born son. This where the Jewish Feast of Passover comes from.
The Israelites got to keep their sheep and cattle. And they got to leave Egypt. God told Moses to take his people into the desert and await further instructions.
The Egyptians had made running a government look easy, but Moses quickly learned that it’s actually kind of a grind, especially when you’re leading a nation of people on what is going to be a 40-year nature hike.
There was simply no way Moses could be everywhere to make sure nobody killed anyone else, stole their food, screwed their wife, or ate something that made them sick. And even when he could catch someone in the act, there wasn’t much he could do about it. You can’t exactly put someone in jail when you’re marching ten miles a day.
Moses did his best to keep order, but people kept getting sick, fights would break out and people were so fed up with the situation that they threatened to leave and go back to Egypt. For a while, it looked as if in the midst of all this crime and chaos that the tribes of Israel might simply dissolve and everyone would go their separate ways.
Moses wracked his brain for ways to keep his nation of hikers together. Finally, God decided to help Moses out. He called him up to the top of Mount Sinai and gave him a bunch of stone tablets. “Be sure to tell everyone that these are coming from me.” God told him. “If they follow these laws, I’ll always be there to watch over them,” God said. “That’s the deal.” To commemorate his deal with the people of Israel, God told Moses to build the Ark of the Covenant, a gold trunk decorated with angels. Inside the trunk, they kept the Ten Commandments and some other mementos.
They also built a Mercy Seat, a little seat on top of the ark so that when he came down from Heaven, God could ride around on top and kill people as they carried the ark with them.
After a few days, Moses came back down the mountain with a bunch of laws, and unlike the rules he’d tried to lay down, these laws, he told them, were given to him personally by God. A gasp went up from the crowd. This was serious poker. People were far more worried about disobeying God who, unlike Moses, actually could be everywhere at once. So they cut down on cheating, robbing, and killing each other and generally cleaned up their act.
The nation of hikers was saved.
Leviticus
To: The children of Israel
From: Moses
Re: A Few New Rules
Now that we aren’t in Egypt anymore, we’re going to need our own laws. Luckily, during our get-together on Mount Sinai, God gave me 613 easy-to-follow rules. To sum up:
First off, God wants you to make sacrifices to him. If you’ve sinned, if you’ve just had a baby, or if you just want to make God feel appreciated, you can bring him goats, sheep, cows, little cakes. You know, that sort of thing. If you’re going to make a sacrifice, though, it’s got to be primo stuff. No three-legged goats or burnt bread.
Speaking of food— starting now, you all have to eat kosher. What does “kosher” mean? Well, it basically means there’s certain things you can’t eat. No bats and no wild birds. You have no idea what those birds are up to when they’re out flying around. No lizards (sorry, Simon the Lizard-Eater, I know this one’s especially hard on you). Fish are cool, as long as they have scales and fins. Eels and shellfish are just…I don’t know, sort of gross. You can eat any animal that has cleft hooves, EXCEPT for pigs, camels and badgers. Don’t ask me why you can’t eat badgers, you just can’t. Insects that fly are out, but insects that walk on the ground are okay. You can eat all the termites you want.
If you have a mildew problem, you have to burn your clothes and blankets. If you have a wet dream, you have to take a bath. If you have a pus-filled sore, take a bath and then burn your clothes. If someone gets a skin disease, make him take a bath and shave off all his hair.
If a man with eczema spits on you, you have to take a bath and burn all your clothes. If we can’t be the holiest people of all time, we’ll damn well be the cleanest.
God has Ten Commandments which he thinks are REALLY important. They are as follows:
No other gods (at least not that you like better than God).
No idols. That’s sort of like expecting your wife to be okay with keeping a picture of your ex-girlfriend on your desk.
No invoking God’s name in vain. If you’re going to start a fight, leave God out of it.
Keep the Sabbath. No working on Saturdays. Everyone needs at least one day off.
&
nbsp; Don’t embarrass mom and dad Trust me, this one will come in handy when you have kids of your own.
Don’t kill each other. I would have hoped this one would be obvious.
No adultery. Everybody sleep in your own tent.
Don’t steal. What’s mine ISN’T yours.
Don’t lie about each other, or falsely accuse each other of crimes. Don’t make us look stupid for punishing the wrong guy. And finally…
Don’t get jealous over each other’s shit. None of you really have anything worth being jealous over, anyway. I don’t care how nice or expensive your neighbor’s shepherd staff is. It shouldn’t keep you awake at night.
In addition, God forbids the following: club sandwiches, gay sex between men, sorcery, incest, making fun of the deaf, bestiality, shaving, tattoos, rare steaks, gossip, cotton-and-wool twills, threesomes, crooked scales, sex with slaves, and eating animals if you don’t know how they died.
God also gave me several penalties for breaking these laws, most of which are rather unpleasant, and frankly, complicated. For example, if a couple commits good old-fashioned adultery, they’re both to be killed. But if a guy complicates matters by sleeping with his wife’s mother, then all three of them have to be burned to death, including the wife, who might not have even known what was going on. Harsh, I know.
If a man has sex with his wife while she is on her period, then they’re merely exiled. But if a man has sex with an animal, both he and the animal have to be killed. And just so you know, if the nation as a whole ignores these laws, then your crops will be eaten by invaders and your children will be devoured by wild animals.
So there’s no safety in numbers here.
If you have any questions about these laws, take them up with the priests. Oh, and priests, we’ve got a few rules for you, too. First of all, keep your hair looking nice. God likes that. And make sure you use the right kind of oil in your ceremonies. You have to be very careful about sacrifices. You know my brother Aaron? His sons Nadab and Adihu used the wrong oil in a sacrifice and God killed them right there on the spot. So needless to say, this is a no-bullshit business.
Also, priests, you have to marry virgins. Oh, and no amputees. They have no relationship with God.
Okay, those are the laws God gave me to pass on to you. Isn’t this exciting?
Numbers
God decided to channel his anger into more positive activities, like hobbies. It was around this time that God got bit by the real estate bug. He found this great piece of beach front property on the Mediterranean and thought it would be just perfect for his chosen people, so he promised it to them. Which is sort of like me promising you Gary’s sandwich out of the break room fridge. Despite being promised to them, the land already belonged to other people. If the Israelites wanted their Promised Land, they would have to conquer it.
Moses took a census of all the tribes and drafted an army. One of the problems with going to war is that while the men are away fighting, the women tend to get lonely. Moses came up with a method for testing whether a wife was cheating on her husband.
It went like this: The priests would put a curse on some water, and have the wife drink it. If she had remained faithful, nothing would happen to her. But if she’d been sleeping around, she would get really fat and her thighs would rot off.
It’s not clear whether this was actually expected to work, or if it was just something Moses came up with to put the minds of nervous husbands at ease.
With their army assembled, and their test for wayward wives in hand, the nation of Israel marched towards the Promised Land. At first, they were fresh and happy, blowing their trumpets, showing off the Ark of the Covenant, waving to people in the desert as they passed by.
After a while, though, they started getting cranky. They complained about having nothing but to eat but the bread that God magically laid out on the ground for them every night. They fantasized about the fish, cucumbers, and melons they used to eat back in Egypt. They griped to Moses.
If God could send them magic bread, couldn’t he just as easily summon up a falafel wrap or some meat?
This ingratitude really chafed God. “Oh, they want meat, do they?” he said spitefully, “I’ll give them some meat!” God sent wave after wave of quails crashing into the ground until everyone was wading up to their waists in dead birds.
Despite all the quail meat, though, people kept complaining.
Moses sent a scouting team ahead of the nation of hikers to check out the Promised Land. The scouts reported that, on the plus side, it was a veritable “land of milk and honey.” The scouts were less enthusiastic, however, about the fact that the land was populated by heavily armed giants. Of all the scouts, only two, Joshua and Caleb, recommended going forward. People weren’t eager to fight these giants, though. Moaning turned into panic and people began speaking openly of revolt and returning to Egypt.
Even Moses’ sister Miriam questioned his judgment in forging ahead into this terrifying new land.
Now, there are few things God hates more than a whiner. As punishment for her complaining, God gave Miriam leprosy for seven days. Everyone else got snakes.
Poisonous snakes started popping up out of nowhere, biting people left and right. When God felt that the whiners had enough, he told Moses to build a pole with a brass snake winding around it. When the people quit their grumbling and looked up at the pole, all their snakebites were magically cured. The pole with snakes went on to become our symbol for medicine. You can still see it on the side of ambulances today, even though they rarely get called out for mass snakebites.
Wherever they went, tens of thousands of Israelites would suddenly show up uninvited, trampling the grass, devouring the crops, and drinking everything in sight. They were like a plague of locusts or hippies.
Soon, the hikers of Israel encountered the Midianites and their slutty women. Their sluttiness infuriated God, as they were always seducing the Israelite men.
So God told Moses to send the army to slaughter the Midianites. The soldiers went in and killed all the Midianite men. But when Moses showed up and saw the mountain of bodies, he wasn’t happy at all.
“I told you to kill ALL the Midianites. Why are there still all these women and children standing around?” The soldiers objected to killing unarmed women and children, but Moses talked them into it by letting them each keep one virgin girl as a souvenir.
On that sour note, the Israelites at last arrived at the River Jordan. Across the river lay the Promised Land. Moses died before they could cross the river, though. He left Joshua in charge.
Joshua was the kind of guy who didn’t get squeamish at the sight of blood, and that was a good thing because the killing had just begun.
Deuteronomy
Just before he died, Moses said, “I won’t be around to see it, but you’re all about to come into a whole lot of land. When that happens you will no longer be a traveling group of tribes but a bona fide nation.
So, as a parting gift, I wanted to give you a few hundred extra laws to help you along.
Everybody ready? Okay, here we go:
“Guys, don’t marry foreign girls and don’t rape any girls, foreign or not. If you rape somebody and they turn out to be engaged to be married, then your punishment is to be stoned to death. If you rape somebody and they’re not engaged to be married, then your punishment is to marry her.
“If two guys are fighting in the street and one of their wives jumps in and grabs the other guy’s balls, cut off her hand. The last thing we need around here is a nut-clutcher.
“Once you get around to building towns and cities, set aside three cities as places of refuge. If you accidentally kill somebody and their relatives come looking for you, try to make it to one of these three cities. Once you’re inside a city of refuge, they have to let you stay and no one can kill you.
If you kill somebody on purpose, however, you’re on your own.
“If you get married and for som
e reason you think that your wife is not a virgin, you can take it up with the elders. If it turns out that you’re right, you can have her stoned to death. But if it turns out that you’re wrong, then you have to pay her father a hundred shekels for slandering the merchandise.
“Build a fence around your roof so that no one will fall off while you’re up there. It may seem silly now, but trust me, this will save you a lot of grief in the long run.
“If you’re a soldier and you have a wet dream, you’ve got to leave camp for one whole day before you come back. Also, when you’re in camp, be sure to shit discreetly in a hole. Remember, God walks among you, and the last thing you want is for him to be stepping in your shit.
“Don’t take a man’s tools as security for a debt. If you take his livelihood from him, then how is he supposed to pay you back, dumbass? And if you take his cloak as collateral, give it back to him when night comes around so he doesn’t freeze to death. Don’t take advantage of the poor and don’t be stingy. Once you go harvesting through your fields once, leave whatever’s left over for widows and orphans. You don’t need to squeeze every last grape out of your land. This shall be your social safety net.
“If you do these things and observe all the other laws I’ve given you, then God will lift you above all other nations. If you don’t, then God will send a hairy foreigner to steal your girlfriend.If you have trouble remembering all these laws, then as a rule of thumb, treat each other well and you should be okay. And if God wants you to do something, don’t ask too many questions, just do it, even if it’s kind of weird.”
And with that, Moses died.
Part Two
The History
In which people learn not to touch God’s stuff, a series of handsome men become king, and God gets a new hobby.
God Is Disappointed In You Page 2