Jacob Was Screwing Around With His Wife's Maid

Tailspin
Posts: 12
Joined: 2008-01-15
User is offlineOffline
Jacob Was Screwing Around With His Wife's Maid

If you read the following you'll wonder why anyone considers the "Good Book" a guide to moral behavior. "Those old rules don't apply to us because social mores change," you say? Okay, fine, then why not accept that science has changed what we know too? <!--break-->

A biblical character Gad (
Gen. 30:11) is allotted the land east of Jordan (Num. 32). Gad was the son Jacob fathered by Zelpah, his wife's maid.  (Gen. 29:24).

Good grief!
Jacob was screwing around with his wife's maid. Not exactly a kids story. So I did a little digging, and...it's in The Book!

It seems Jacob and his Uncle Laban had a deal where if Jacob worked for 7 years he could have Uncle Laban's daughter, cousin Rachel, for his wife—pay before play, as it were.

But Uncle Laban wants to unload his ugly oldest daughter Leah instead of letting his younger beautiful Rachel go, so he bribes Leah into going along with the gag by giving her a slave called Zilpah as a handmaid. (In a modern version she'd get a sports car, but whatever).

So Uncle Laban tricks nephew Jacob, and secretly puts his ugly oldest daughter in the wedding bed instead of the beautiful younger Rachel that Jacob had already worked for 7 years to earn. Jacob (an 'only with the lights off' kinda guy, apparently) doesn't discover the switch until the morning after the honeymoon night. Of course, he's furious when he discovers been had by a bait-and-switch tactic—the old switcheroo.

But it gets weirder. Uncle Laban, shrewd negotiator that he is, calms Jacob down by agreeing that Jacob can have Rachel now—
and Leah later—if Jacob works another 7 years. The beginning of time payment and direct deduction from wages programs, presumably. So Jacob (who apparently really has the hots for Rachel) ends up with two wives...both his first cousin, incidentally.

Leah has lots of kids (including Levi and Judah of Handel's 
Messiahfame), and Rachel has none. Why? Because God sees that Leah is despised by Jacob, and makes her fruitful and makes the more desired Rachel barren. A mean trick on Rachel, especially for a supposedly loving God, since she's an innocent bystander and guilty only of being beautiful.

God, evidently, is trying to make a point with Jacob, and presumably the readers of the Good Book, about the unfairness of favoritism. But remember, Jacob was tricked into having (in the Biblical sense) the wife he doesn't particularly like to begin with! Kinda hard to blame him for not being wild about ugly old Leah, when he wanted foxy young Rachel!

Anyway, Rachel is so devastated by God's magical contraception program that she talks hubby Jacob into screwing her maid Bilhah so she can have (in a distorted way of thinking) her "own" kids. The original surrogate mother experiment and the first direct deposit program. Don't believe all this? Read Genesis 30.

But if all this isn't weird enough, now ugly but previously fruitful Leah, who has since apparently become menopausal, talks Jacob into screwing 
her slave Zilpah in a misguided and unnecessary attempt to get even (she's already had six kids to Rachel's one). Jacob jumps into bed with another maid, apparently happy with all this kinky sex, and we (finally) end up with Gad.

Later, (and mind you this is right out of Genesis) in a repeat performance by Jacob and Leah, er...Zilpah actually...we also end up with Joseph, the one with the fancy coat, who becomes his father's favorite kid (here we go again).

His brother's are jealous so they beat him up, steal the coat of many colors, and sell him to slave traders. So God, who evidently doesn't have much else to do, starts meddling with things again and makes Joseph successful and handsome.

Now, in a surprising but not too unexpect plot twist given all the other hanky-pankey, Joseph's master's wife starts hitting on him...
throwsherself at him. He resists, good slave that he is, but she literally yanks the clothes off him and goes running around the neighborhood screaming and waving his underwear claiming he tried to rape her. The cuckold master buys his wife's story, and has Joseph thrown in jail.

But there's a happy ending. The jailer gets to know Joseph (likely in the Biblical sense, although it depends on what translation your read) and Joe ends up in charge of all the prisoners. He's shooting the bull with them one day, and they ask him if he can interpret their dreams. He says no, only God can do that, but does anyway, and—like any good psychic—gives them an answer they like.

Joseph gets a reputation for being a pretty darn good dream interpreter, (and now we depart slightly from the Biblical version—but only updated a bit) he hits all the morning talk shows, and becomes quite the celebrity. The Pharaoh sees him on Oprah and calls him in for a private dream interpretation session. The Pharaoh 
really likes Joseph's answer, and makes him Assistant Pharaoh in charge of the whole country, with all the perks. That part is in the Bible; by the way. Perhaps the first rags to riches plot line.

The whole soap opera ends with a tender scene when Grandpa Jacob is dying, son Joseph shows up at his bedside with some of the grandkiddies Gramps has never seen (there were 70 altogether!) and makes the old man very happy. Joseph eventually dies too at the ripe old age of 110 with 32,500 offspring, no less. (They don't call the fourth book of the Bible 'Numbers' fer nuttin'!)


aiia
Superfan
aiia's picture
Posts: 1923
Joined: 2006-09-12
User is offlineOffline
Tailspin, your digest of

Tailspin, your digest of Jacob's adventure was hilarious.


shelley
ModeratorRRS local affiliate
shelley's picture
Posts: 1859
Joined: 2006-12-26
User is offlineOffline
source?

Tailspin
Posts: 12
Joined: 2008-01-15
User is offlineOffline
Source?

Repackaged from my blog Wow! Really?, yes.


shelley
ModeratorRRS local affiliate
shelley's picture
Posts: 1859
Joined: 2006-12-26
User is offlineOffline
Tailspin wrote: Repackaged

Tailspin wrote:
Repackaged from my blog Wow! Really?, yes.

I wasn't saying it was or wasn't your work... Just posting the link. 


Tailspin
Posts: 12
Joined: 2008-01-15
User is offlineOffline
Cool

Thanks. The question mark is what made me think it was a question  Cool


mindspread
mindspread's picture
Posts: 360
Joined: 2007-02-18
User is offlineOffline
We get a lot of people who

We get a lot of people who come one here and just copy and paste other people's work.

 

A lot of us get in the habit of checking posts for plagiarism.

 

Welcome to the boards BTW. Smiling


Tailspin
Posts: 12
Joined: 2008-01-15
User is offlineOffline
Thanks

Howdy do!

Love what you're doin' here.

I'll add some more when I have time. 


deusXmachina
Theist
Posts: 4
Joined: 2008-02-10
User is offlineOffline
Tailspin wrote: The whole

Tailspin wrote:

The whole soap opera ends with a tender scene when Grandpa Jacob is dying, son Joseph shows up at his bedside with some of the grandkiddies Gramps has never seen (there were 70 altogether!) and makes the old man very happy. Joseph eventually dies too at the ripe old age of 110 with 32,500 offspring, no less. (They don't call the fourth book of the Bible 'Numbers' fer nuttin'!)

 

That puts to shame that 18 Kids and Knocked Up or whatever the hell it's called on TLC about the Quivverful loonies.

 

And does this mean the Good Lord Jeebus Christ Almighty condones wifeswapping parties? 

Deus Ex Machina - God from a Machine? Or is it Deus Est Machina - God IS a Machine?


REVLyle
TheistTroll
Posts: 236
Joined: 2007-05-10
User is offlineOffline
You might want to read Gen.

You might want to read Gen. 30 again and see where Joseph came from.  Not sure what your point was.  There is not a Christian out there that says everything in the Bible is an example of what to do.  There are many examples of what NOT to do. 

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.


Tailspin
Posts: 12
Joined: 2008-01-15
User is offlineOffline
I must say, I'm somewhat

I must say, I'm somewhat disarmed by your level response. You get points for that! But I don't see where I went wrong about Jacob. Remember there were two, just to keep us on our toes. But I'll be the first to admit I may be on the wrong foot, and I'm always open to new information and willing to change my mind.

My point was that the Bible is full of material that is by modern standards ridiculous. Yet many people do claim that it is an example of how to behave. They, and you, manage to ignore certain parts and hold to other parts.

The problem is who decides which parts are right and which aren't; which parts are God's commandments and which can be ignored? How you pound the podium and claim, with a straight face, that certain parts in it absolutely positively are The Word, and those other parts, well, we can just kinda ignore them since they're kinda inconvenient. Killing babies, taking an eye for an eye, and the such.

 Actually, why don't we just start with the issue of why we should accept those books as the Bible and God's Will revealed, and ignore all the other books that a bunch of guys decided God was mistaken about?


Bulldog
Superfan
Bulldog's picture
Posts: 333
Joined: 2007-08-04
User is offlineOffline
Lordy, that was the funniest

Lordy, that was the funniest version of that story I've ever heard.  Took about ten minutes to recover from the gut wrenching laughter so I could get up off the floor to comment.  You do stand-up too?

"Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state,' therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society." Thomas Jefferson
www.myspace.com/kenhill5150


Tailspin
Posts: 12
Joined: 2008-01-15
User is offlineOffline
Yes, I do stand up. And I

Yes, I do stand up. And I always put the toilet seat down afterwards too.

Barum-bump.