{"id":1753,"date":"2020-12-13T16:56:06","date_gmt":"2020-12-14T00:56:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/2020\/12\/13\/the-5-books-meander-week-9-va-yashev\/"},"modified":"2020-12-13T16:56:06","modified_gmt":"2020-12-14T00:56:06","slug":"the-5-books-meander-week-9-va-yashev","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/2020\/12\/13\/the-5-books-meander-week-9-va-yashev\/","title":{"rendered":"The 5 Books Meander, Week 9 (Va-Yashev)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>In brief:<\/strong><br \/>\nWe meet Jacob\u2019s second-youngest-son Joseph, who is beloved by his father, and a bit of a twerp. Speaking of Joseph\u2019s father, despite being renamed by the Lord, which you would think would count for something, so-called \u201cIsrael\u201d is actually still called \u201cJacob.\u201d This naming thing is complicated. <\/p>\n<p>Joseph is sold into slavery. In a side story, Jacob\u2019s son Judah\u2019s daughter-in-law Tamar is twice widowed. Through some exceptionally tricky trickery , she ends up having twins with her father-in-law Judah. And along the way, at least in my translation, she gets called a \u201ccult prostitute\u201d for her troubles. Oh, and we meet her second husband, the infamous Onan &#8212; more on him in a moment.<\/p>\n<p>Joseph goes down to Egyptland as a slave, resists temptation in a scene that feels straight out of<em> To Kill a Mockingbird,<\/em> gets thrown in jail, and delivers some exceptionally good news to the cupbearer, and some less positive news to the baker. (Spoiler: don\u2019t get attached to the baker.)<\/p>\n<p><strong>A couple of thoughts:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Joseph has some exciting dreams involving all sorts of people bowing to him. Which is great. And then he shares these dreams with everyone. Which is less great. There\u2019s something wonderfully human though about meeting this young obnoxious Joseph and realizing, just like his dad, and just like all of us, he\u2019s on a journey. He\u2019s flawed and, let\u2019s hope, capable of improving over time. As a young \u2018un though, I\u2019m not sure he deserved being thrown in a pit. But I\u2019m not not sure either.<\/li>\n<li>I was fairly stoked to run into the infamous Onan, namesake for the sin of self-pleasure (aka \u201cOnanism\u201d). Turns out, and stay with me on this: Onan\u2019s brother Er died, Onan is told to marry Er\u2019s widow Tamar, and Onan\u2019s sin is that because he wouldn\u2019t get legal credit for any kid they might co-procreate, he chose instead to \u201clet [his seed] go to waste, whenever [they] joined.\u201d OK, so first off, I\u2019m pretty sure that\u2019s not masturbation. And isn\u2019t Onan\u2019s sin really just being a total jerk? So there it is, if someone\u2019s a total jerk, feel free to call them an Onanist and tell them the Lord doesn\u2019t approve. And if they question you, just say: \u201cGenesis 38:10, mic drop.&#8221; The mic drop part is really important. If you don&#8217;t do that part, you are an Onanist.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>If you\u2019d like to join in\u2026<\/strong> this is the place for comments and commentary on <em>Va-Yashev<\/em> (Gen 37.1 \u2013 40.23)<br \/>\n<strong>Next up:<\/strong> <em>Mikkets<\/em> (Gen 41.1 \u2013 44.17)<br \/>\n-Cecil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In brief: We meet Jacob\u2019s second-youngest-son Joseph, who is beloved by his father, and a bit of a twerp. Speaking of Joseph\u2019s father, despite being renamed by the Lord, which you would think would count for something, so-called \u201cIsrael\u201d is actually still called \u201cJacob.\u201d This naming thing is complicated. Joseph is sold into slavery. In [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meander"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1753\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}