The Answerer

I have answered this one before in Question 264 but a bit extra detail won’t hurt. Jealousy and money – people kill for it today – just as people did in Bible times.

I like the telling of bad bits in the Bible because it shows that it is not a lovely tale of lovely people doing lovely things all over the world, and everything in the garden is lovely. It was not!

Joseph’s brothers were older than him, had wives and children with flocks and herds of their own. Money and power change people – not everyone can handle it well.

Happening this year, 2013, in Perth, my home town in Western Australia, where the richest woman in the world lives,s he is being sued in the supreme court by her children over money. A lot of it, and when and how much her children will get from her estate, or family trust. That is the general idea of what the argument is basically about, money.

Joseph’s brothers were ‘first-in-line’ to get a larger share of their father's (Jacob) estate when he died. That was normal custom and Jacob was very rich. With his two dreams and after his very expensive coat (see Genesis Chapter 37) the brothers realised that Joseph was now ‘first-in-line’ for a bigger share of Dad’s estate. Hate grew.

I said this was a great Bible ‘Soap Opera:’ Love, hate, jealousy, greed conniving and back stabbing, it has got it all…with forgiveness and mercy.

Do read the whole story in Genesis, it is a great yarn. Start at Genesis Chapter 12 to 50. Abraham fathers a child at 100 years old and Sarah, his wife, has a baby boy at 90 years old, then right up to Joseph’s brothers coming to Egypt to escape the famine, and everyone bowing down to him just as his dreams had shown! That was the beginning of the modern state of ISRAEL.

A common joke: IF YOU ASK TWO JEWS A QUESTION, YOU WILL GET THREE DIFFERENT ANSWERS! It seems they love to argue about their interpretation of the Bible, or The Torah, the five books of Moses. God bless ‘em for all their faults and arguments. But they are, like it or not, eternally ”God’s chosen people.”