XIX
Biblical Family Values Parte the Thirde: Erecting Phallic Symbols
(Genesis 35)
I would ask all of you who’ve ever giggled uncomfortably and twittered about “quaint heathen customs” while watching Hindu priests oil up Shiva’s penis on the National Geographic Channel to pay close attention to the following section.
After Jacob’s sons piss off the entire region by murdering a whole town full of dudes, then stealing all their stuff (including their women and children), the Jacob clan has to go. God tells Jacob to head back to Bethel and make an altar to him. So Jake makes everybody get rid of their strange gods, clean up, change clothes, and go. Traveling through the territories of all the cities who’ve heard of their mass-murdering ways might ordinarily be a little fraught, but God jams his divine finger into the terror centers of the residents’ brains, so they’re too shit-scared to attack. How thoughtful (Gen. 35:1-5).
After they’ve got settled in and built the required altar, God decides to bless his favorite scummy cheating dirtbag with the mass-murdering sons. He delivers his usual pitch, telling them to have more babies, father nations and kings, possess the same land as Abraham and Isaac, etc. Also, God bestows a sniny new name on Jacob. Jake, now called Israel (although the Bible writers keep forgetting God renamed him), is so impressed by this that he sets up a pillar of stone right there where he and God talked (Gen 35:6-14).
And then he pours wine all over it. Then he oils it up (Gen. 35:14).
Yeeep… So, yeah, you’re never allowed to laugh at other cultures and their phallic religious statues again.
So Jacob Israel takes this be-fruitful-and-multiply order seriously, and promptly knocks Rachel up again. God sorta forgets to bless her, so she ends up having her labor go catastrophically wrong. The midwife says, “No worries – it’s gonna be a boy!” Which piece of great news somehow fails to save Rachel’s life. With her last breath, she names her baby boy – the one she’s dying for – Benoni. You might think a man would respect and cherish his beloved wife’s very last word, but Jacob promptly renames the kid Benjamin, because he’s a patriarch and that’s how he rolls. But at least he erects a penis pillar on his dead wife’s grave (Gen. 35:16-20).
Jacob Israel keeps right on traveling, until the clan reaches the countryside past Eder. He pitches his tent, and the next thing he knows, his son Reuben’s sleeping with his concubine, Bilhah. Shtupping Dad’s own sex slave. The nerve of some kids, let me tell you (Gen. 35:21-22).
For some reason, right after that, the Genesis writers decide to give us a list of all twelve of Jacob’s sons, both his wives, and his two concubines – but leave out the daughter, because it’s not like girl children matter, even if you have committed genocide for them (Gen. 35:23-26).
Nice little traditional Biblical family there, innit?
Copyright © 2015 by Dana Hunter. All rights reserved.
Really Terrible Bible Stories vol. I: Genesis is now available at Amazon! Worldwide, even!
Makes sense. All Hail the Mighty Peen! If you don’t have one, or have one but use it wrong, you can’t be mighty. Makes all the sense. :P
Also, if we’re going to be consistent with the pillar = phallus analogy, then, really, god turned Lot’s wife into a salt version of a penis. Which is probably the highest honour one could aspire to, really, besides the usual eternal-life crap.
I lol’d so hard you don’t even know. And what’s remarkable is that I’d just been on a very sad trip down memory lane, so it wasn’t like I was in a mood to laugh. It’s a miracle!
Mrs. Lot, Salt Lingham. *snortle*
Oh sure, they murdered, raped, stole and sorta commited incest but they didn’t eat bacon!
Completely off topic, but I just suddenly got logged out by FTB. Man, I see what everyone is complaining about with those ads. Hurray for the ad-free option.
She needs business cards. Unfortunately, nobody knows her first name anymore (apparently Jewish tradition says ‘Ado’ or ‘Edith’ but no biblical confirmation on that).
^ … Until I remember, hey, she’s married in a patriarchy, she doesn’t HAVE a first name / name of her own anymore. She really IS Mrs. Lot, Salt Lingham. :D What a claim to fame.
Also, *hugs*. :)
Should a Satguru wear gold rings and a gold necklace? Whatever happened to being unostentatious?
Given the topic, I have to share something that happened at school today.
It was a nice day, so the 8th graders were outside on the playground for a few minutes after lunch. Some of the boys found a cylindrical object, which on closer inspection turned out to be vibrating.
They found the playground supervisor, and one of them told her “Mrs. Y, we found a dildo!” When his friends told him he shouldn’t talk to her that way, he responded that he didn’t know what else to call it.
The Principal was summoned, came out to look at it, and decided that the situation called for gloves (makes sense to me – you don’t know where it’s been). He returned armed with gloves and a plastic bag, picked it up, found a switch and turned it off. He then noticed that it looked like it would separate into two sections, so he pulled it apart.
It was a toothbrush.
I lol’d again. Still lmao in fact. But I am also sad about the state of sex-ed in this country. I’m sad kids don’t know the difference between a dildo and a vibrator. And I’m really sad that an electric toothbrush got mistaken for one. Unless they make electric toothbrushes bigger then they used to…
Thankees! Hugs to you, too!