Joseph and freewill

January 22, 2009, 2:07 pm by dc-agape.

Genesis Chapter 50:15 – 26

Here ends the exploits of YHWH in the Book of Genesis.  This is also the end of the Patriarchs of the Israelites.  Before I did into the Book of Exodus, I want to devote some time to the TrueChristianTM part of the Word of God as well.  My next posts will be in the Book of Matthew.  My plan is to continue flipping back and forth between the Old and New Testaments.  One reason for this is that I don’t want to get bored!  A second is that I don’t want you to get bored.  I also want to provide equal efforts to both Judaism and Christianity.  If I continue to poke holes in the Old Testament it might look as if I am focusing on Judaism, which is not the point of this experiment. 

But let me finish up with the last few verses of Genesis.  In these verses Joseph’s brothers come to him in a panic.  They are afraid he holds a grudge against them for his own slavery.  I can certainly see why they would be worried.  But Joseph reassures them that everything that has happen was because of YHWH and not his brothers.  Here is another example of YHWH interrupting our own freewill.  You see his brothers had to sell Joseph into slavery or none of this would have happened the way YHWH had planned!  So now we understand that YHWH made Joseph’s brothers jealous of him, YHWH gave Judah the idea to sell Joseph into slavery, YHWH made sure that the Ishmaelites where close by to purchase Joseph, and YHWH even made Potiphar purchase Joseph!  So how many people did YHWH take freewill away from in this story?  If we continue with this trend…even the sexual advances of Potiphar’s wife onto Joseph were controlled by YHWH.  YHWH made Potiphar’s wife sin!  How does this make YHWH a good god, loving god, or even a god to be worshipped?

The brothers of Joseph have another thing to worry about as well.  Joseph has sold all the peoples of Egypt and Canaan into slavery.  Does this include his brothers?  If so he is there master!  Not only can he take his grudge out on them as a powerful Egyptian second-in-command, but even worse he can take his grudge out on them as their slave owner!  Now this may not be the case, we know that the priests of Egypt were not sold into slavery, maybe Joseph provided free food to all his relatives.  But if this happened, it would only strengthen the case for the famine to be due to corruption and not to a natural occurring event!  Can you imagine living in during a famine as great as this seven year famine and know that certain people were being provided for without being sold into slavery?  We start to see why the Israelites were hated by the Egyptians.  Either Joseph sold his brothers into slavery or the people of Egypt forced slavery onto the Israelites for the corruption that Joseph perpetrated!

An interesting thing occurs is how his brothers approach Joseph about their fears.  They lie to him!  This is a great example of “godliness”!  The patriarchs of the Jewish and Christian religion cannot help themselves; they cannot “live righteously before the Lord”. Here is the lie:

Gen 50:16-17 So they sent word to Joseph, saying, “Your father left these instructions before he died: This is what you are to say to Joseph: I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly.  Now please forgive the sins of the servants of the God of your father.”  When their message came to him, Joseph wept.

You can tell this is a lie for a number of reasons.  First, they do not go to Joseph, they send him a message.  You can always lie better is the person cannot see your face.  Second, Joseph was with his father during the “Blessing of Jacob” and at his death bed.  Israel had plenty of time to make the instructions directly to Joseph!  But it was a very effective lie, it caused Joseph to weep.  Joseph realized that he was negligent in his treatment of his entire family.  This is a Biblical family value?

Years later Joseph is preparing to die.  But before he dies he gets to see the great grandchildren: the sons of Makir, who is the son of Manasseh.  He pleads with his living relatives that when they leave Egypt to take his body and be buried in Canaan!  He does not request where his bones to be buried, he just does not want to be buried in Egypt. 

There is one thing that as a gay Atheist I cannot forget to bring up.  It is about the “christian” interpretation of a never-changing trust-worthy YHWH.  Joseph is the first character in the entire Word of God that fulfills YHWH decree that man’s life will be 120 years (Gen 6:3). After only 650 years YHWH has finally gotten around to being consistent.  This never changing, truthful god has been inconsistent and lying for 650 years!  I guess he gets better at those qualities as he matures.

Posted in YHWH & slavery, Joseph, Family Values?, Genesis, Freewill, Readings | Print | No Comments »