BEMA 215: Character Study — Joseph, Part 2

Transcription Status

26 Sep 24 — Initial public release

24 May 24 — Transcript approved for release

Character Study — Joseph, Part 2

Brent Billings: This is The BEMA Podcast with Marty Solomon and his co-host Brent Billings. Today, we will merge our studies of Yossef and Yaakov. As Yossef eventually experiences a reunification with his family, what more is left to do? Shouldn’t we sit back and enjoy the redemption in Egypt? Apparently not, according to Yaakov.

Marty Solomon: Right, we’re going to jump in right where we left off. We reminded ourselves, at the end of our last episode, all the things that Joseph didn’t know. What was the detail that we said Joseph didn’t know, Brent?

Brent: He didn’t know that his father thought he was dead.

Marty: That’s right. Joseph could be waiting for his dad to come rescue him. He is the favorite son anyway, his dad has always been there to back him up and so that could probably be what he’s expecting, yet it never really happens. Joseph’s life just continues to unravel. In Fohrman’s bigger teaching, and we’re going to recommend all the same books where you can find his larger different presentations of this teaching.

The Exodus You Almost Passed Over, Genesis: a Parsha Companion, his teachings that you might find at alephbeta.org. All those things would be super helpful. Long before he wrote those books, he had a lecture series called Goats and Coats that you can sometimes find on the internet in different places. Goats and Coats. He talks about this moment where Joseph has to probably come to grapple with the fact that his dad did not come to get him.

He makes this interesting observation about what happens, and we covered this in our original episodes, Brent, but maybe we’ll be able to present them with some extra little goodies and maybe better, maybe worse, who knows? The first time we saw stuff, it all seemed to happen in reverse order. Fohrman points this out beautifully, visually, by the way, in his book with visual diagrams.

In Genesis 37, we see Joseph say to Jacob, “I dreamed a dream. I had a dream. Come hear me, come listen to me.” In 37:10, here is the father hearing the son’s dream, and Jacob scoffs at Joseph you remember. Joseph comes to Jacob, he says, “I had a dream, let me tell you about it.” In the next verse, his father scoffs at his dream. Then later in the story, he’s sent away by Jacob. You can remember he’s sent away to go check in on the brothers. Then he ends up getting stripped of his clothes. They strip the robe off of him, and then he’s cast into a pit. All this is ringing a bell, right, Brent?

Brent: It was the title of our episode.

Marty: That is correct. Those are the five things that happened, really four things as Fohrman identifies them. The telling and the hearing of a dream, sent away by the father, stripped of his clothes, cast into a pit. Later in the story, Joseph finds himself in a pit. He’s literally in a dungeon and yet the Hebrew keeps calling it, off and on, it keeps calling it a pit, which is a weird thing to call a dungeon. There is that word for a dungeon, a prison, and yet the Hebrew keeps insisting that he’s in a pit. Almost like it’s wanting you to think back to the first time he was in a pit.

Now he’s in a pit again and Fohrman points out everything happens in reverse. The first time it was telling and hearing the dream, sent away by the father, stripped of his clothes, cast into a pit. Now, he’s pulled out of the pit by Pharaoh, he’s given new clothes, he’s sent for by a new—we could say this Pharaoh was acting an awful lot like a new what, Brent?

Brent: A new father to him.

Marty: Absolutely, a new father figure. Everything that his father did to him, and in fact frustrated him, and ended up leading to his selling and whatever you want to call the downward spiral of his life experience, it ends up going in reverse. You could say maybe almost like a pseudo redemption. He’s pulled out of the pit, he’s given new clothes, instead of sent away, he’s sent for by a new father, and this time the father has a dream and asks Joseph to listen to it. Everything is starting to reverse.

The first time it was a dream, listen to me. Then the father sends him away, he loses his clothes, he’s cast into a pit, then he’s pulled out of the pit, he’s given new clothes, he’s sent for, he is brought to a new father who has a dream and wants him to listen for him. Fohrman goes to a lot of work to show how Joseph, in a lot of senses, has a new father figure. How well did the first story go when he was sent away by his father? Another tricky question, Brent. How did that first story go?

Brent: Not very well for him.

Marty: Not very well for him. How did the second story go?

Brent: With Pharaoh?

Marty: Yes.

Brent: He’s doing pretty well.

Marty: Doing pretty well, ends up being second in command in Egypt.

Brent: That’s essentially where he was in his family, it’s just no one recognized his authority, right?

Marty: Sure, absolutely. You could say there’s so many similarities and yet it just wasn’t working out for him and his family of origin and yet he finds this new family, this new identity where it does work out for him down in Egypt. Remember, this isn’t the Egypt of the Exodus. This is not the Egypt where they’re slaves and everything is going—this is a different kind of Egypt for Joseph. This is an Egypt that’s working quite well for him, that ends up taking care of him.

Everything seems to be going fine until his brothers show up. The brothers are here and now Joseph’s story all comes colliding back together again. He has to deal with the fact that his brothers are here. This first time that they show up, Benjamin is not with them. It makes you wonder if Joseph is trying to figure out, “What happened? Did they get rid of that favorite brother too? What is my dad up to?” He wants to make sure that his favorite brother is with him.

Whatever messy dysfunction the family has and is up to, that’s going to, “I want my brother with me, I want Benjamin here with me.” He sends them back and says, “I want to know that Benjamin—you guys are spies.” Which is fine until they have to go back for the second trip, if you remember. They have to go back for the second trip. Judah has to do a lot of work convincing his dad, like, “Listen, you got to let me take Benjamin. I am not going to be able to go back there without Benjamin.”

He has to convince his dad, like, “If you let me take Benjamin, I will be personally responsible for his safety.” They take Benjamin back for the second time. They get their supplies. Joseph sends them back but he sets them up. He plants this silver cup in the sack of Benjamin knowing that this is going to be his opportunity to rope Benjamin into—I believe his motive is probably to rope Benjamin into staying with him in Egypt. The two brothers reunited, out of the dysfunctional family, back together again in this wonderful land of Egypt.

He sent them out, sends the official out after them. They’ve all been framed and set up with Benjamin having the cup in his sack. Here they show up, and Judah, of all people, this brother is so convinced that they’re not going to be — he’s so sure that they haven’t stolen the silver cup. Give me verse 40, this is what Judah says to the Egyptian officials. Give me 44:9, Brent.

Brent: If any of your servants is found to have it, he will die and the rest of us will become my lord’s slaves.

Marty: He’s so sure that he says, “If anybody has that silver cup, he’ll die.” Tell me what that sounds to you like, Brent Billings.

Brent: Was it Rachel with Laban’s gods?

Marty: Yes, and Jacob was so sure that nobody had stolen the gods that he says, “If anyone has them, they shall die.” In this case, it happens right in front of him. All of a sudden, Judah’s found with the goblet.

Brent: Judah also had that connection with Tamar where he said, “Bring the prostitute out and we’ll kill her.” Then has to backtrack when he knows that there’s a different connection there.

Marty: Absolutely. This is all wrapped up in his own story, like Judah’s own story. The story of his father and his own story between Judah and Tamar. Absolutely, it’s a great observation. As Fohrman says, “He rejects the idea that the thief should die.” Joseph does. This concept of, “No, no, no, the thief doesn’t need to die, that’s not what I’m trying to do here.” Joseph says, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. What does Joseph say? Give me Chapter 44, verse 17, Brent.

Brent: But Yossef said, “Far be it for me to do such a thing. Only the man who was found to have the cup will become my slave. The rest of you, go back to your father in peace.”

Marty: See, that’s his plan, “I don’t need to kill anybody. No one needs to be my slave. I’ll be gracious, I’ll be benevolent. I’m just going to keep the one that had the cup here behind, the rest of you can all go back home. Everything will be fine.” You would think, based on the way the brothers were before, how much did the brothers care about the favorite sons of Jacob before, Brent? They didn’t seem to care very much about that, right?

Brent: Once they got rid of the first one, I guess.

Marty: You wouldn’t imagine this group of brothers being like, “Oh no, we got to—” They’re going to put their tail between their legs and go right on back home. They’ll be just fine. They’ve gotten rid of both the sons of Rachel. Yet, Judah has learned such a valuable lesson through his own story, as you pointed out, Brent, through Judah and Tamar. We did in Session 1. You can go back and listen to the Session 1 episodes because we talked about that.

Give me verse 40. Let’s remember what Judah said to his father, Jacob. Can you remember what Judah told him before he left home? Give me 43:9, Brent, the chapter before what we’re in. This is Judah speaking to Jacob.

Brent: By the way, the episode that we covered this in greater detail is Episode 16 if you want to go back. I’m a little like, “Man, we spent 45 minutes going over at that time and we’re doing it this time in like 15 minutes?” Here we are. 43, “I myself—” This is Yehuda talking to his father. “I myself will guarantee his safety, you can hold me personally responsible for him. If I do not bring him back to you and set him here before you, I will bear the blame before you all my life.”

Marty: We spoke of, in Session 1, this is Judah, he’s come to grips with his own failures, with his own—he’s practicing his own humility, his own confession, and he gets it. He understands why the family’s a mess and he puts his own neck on the line. Now when he gets in front of Joseph and Joseph says, “No, no, just keep that,” Judah has a clear understanding of what’s in it for his father, what he’s told his father, and the promise he’s made to Jacob.

Look at what he says in — let’s go back to 44. Give me verse 30 and 31. This is his response to Joseph when Joseph said, “No, no, no, I’ll just keep Benjamin here, the rest of you go home, have a great life, it’ll be fantastic.”

Brent: Yehuda talking to Yossef. “Now, if the boy is not with us when I go back to your servant, my father, and if my father, whose life is closely bound up with the boy’s life, sees that the boy isn’t there, he will die. Your servants will bring the gray head of our father down to the grave in sorrow.”

Marty: Just a few words here from Rabbi Fohrman in his Genesis book here, Brent. He says this: “This time Judah would confront head-on the terrible truth that started it all. Father loved Rachel more than he loved my mother, and he loves her children more than he loves me. His very soul seems bound up with Benjamin’s, but I accept that. I’m not battling against that anymore. Please, therefore Joseph, take me instead. Let Benjamin go back to our father. It is perhaps Judah’s finest moment and it brings the painful story of the sale of Joseph at long last towards a conclusion. When Joseph hears Judah’s words, he cannot contain himself. He reveals his identity, assures the brothers that he will care for them, and asks that his father will be brought to see him. The family is reunited and the long charade is over.”

Thanks for joining the BEMA Podcast. We’ll talk to you—is this supposed to be the end, Brent?

Brent: We’ve got five more chapters of Genesis apparently still.

Marty: We do. We have a famine, we have Jacob that comes down and joins Joseph in Egypt. We even had this weird interaction where Jacob shows up and Joseph brings him to meet Pharaoh.

Now imagine that. Imagine being Jacob and your favorite son is still alive, imagine the dramatic nature of this story that the son you thought was dead, is actually alive, you get to meet the Pharaoh of Egypt. That’s pretty amazing, that’s pretty great.

Then he shows up to meet Pharaoh. I want to review what Jacob ends up saying when he finally gets in front of Pharaoh. Let’s set that up for just a moment. We’re going to be on Genesis 47 here for just a little bit. Genesis 47. Let’s see. How about you just read me the first — let’s see here. Can you give me the verses that precede verse 30, Brent? Maybe the paragraph before that.

Brent: Yaakov lived in Egypt 17 years and the years of his life were 147. When the time drew near for Israel to die, he called for his son, Joseph, and said to him, “If I have found favor in your eyes, put your hand under my thigh and promise that you will show me kindness and faithfulness. Do not bury me in Egypt.”

Marty: Jacob calls Joseph. We are told he lives in Egypt for quite some time. How many years did it say, Brent? 17?

Brent: 17, yes.

Marty: 17 years, he lived down in Egypt. He gets to the end of his life, calls Joseph and says, “You’ve got to make me a promise.” Imagine this deathbed moment. “You got to make me a promise. Do not bury me in Egypt.” Seems weird but maybe he is a sentimental guy, nostalgic. “Just don’t bury me in Egypt. Make sure you bury me back in the land of our fathers.” What is Jacob’s response in verse 30?

Brent: “I will do as you say,” he said.

Marty: Joseph says, “Yes, sure, dad, no problem, absolutely.” What’s the next verse?

Brent: “Swear to me,” he said. Then Joseph swore to him and Israel worshiped as he leaned on the top of his staff.

Marty: It seems like, man, Jacob was making a really big deal about this like, “Hey, just promise me you’ll bury me in Canaan.” Joseph was like, “Absolutely dad.” He’s like, “No, no, no, swear to me, promise me you will.” Joseph says, “Okay, absolutely.” He swears it. He makes the covenant, he puts his hand under his thigh as Jacob requested, we can assume anyway, and then that weird phrase. What’s the weird phrase that’s used there, Brent?”

Brent: Israel worshiped as he leaned on the top of his staff.

Marty: It’s an interesting translation there. Sometimes, Israel bowed toward the head of the bed is another translation you’ll see there.

Brent: Yes, that’s what it says in the footnote.

Marty: That’s the footnote. That’s what it says in the NIV?

Brent: Yes.

Marty: Excellent. Here’s what the sages said in the Midrash. Let’s see. This would be quoting Rashi. Rashi said, “He prostrated himself to God because his legacy was whole.” Jacob’s legacy was whole. “And so far as not one of his children was wicked. For Joseph was Egyptian royalty and furthermore, he had been captured and lived among the heathens yet he remains steadfast in his righteousness.” There’s something that the rabbis are saying, that the sages in the Midrash are saying about what Jacob is doing here.

There’s something about what Jacob is doing that is about his faithfulness. Something about what he’s doing is about his righteousness, about him doing what he’s supposed to do. It was earlier in that story that Jacob got called before Pharaoh, where he met Pharaoh as I said just a moment ago. It’s an interesting exchange. Can you give me Genesis 47:9?

Brent: Yaakov said to Pharaoh, “The years of my pilgrimage are 130. My years have been few and difficult and they do not equal the years of the pilgrimage of my fathers.”

Marty: Here’s Fohrman’s comments on that: “Why is Jacob in such a bad mood? Why say all that to Pharaoh who is seemingly only trying to be nice complimenting Jacob on having lived to such an advanced age? The answer would seem to lie with Jacob’s understanding of his destiny, a destiny as yet achingly unfulfilled. Decades earlier, Jacob had received a promise from the Almighty. He would have many descendants and these descendants would be given the land of Canaan as their ancestral homeland. Jacob’s destiny was to settle in the land of Canaan, have children, and begin to build the ancient family of Israel in its homeland. As a matter of fact, this seems to have been precisely what Jacob was aiming to do when he returned with his family to the land of Canaan after a long sojourn in the house of his father-in-law, Laban. He was coming home, hopefully for good.”

The very first verse of Genesis 37, Brent, said this, “And Jacob settled in the land where his fathers had sojourned, in the land of Canaan.” It would seem, before this whole Joseph charade got started, that Jacob was finally doing what God had promised him and what he thought he was supposed to do, and yet now he’s been living in Egypt for how long?

Brent: 17 years.

Marty: I wonder if he had this sense of failure. “I thought I had done what God asked me to do, and now my story’s ending and I’m not where God asked me to be. Joseph, you have to bury me in the land of Canaan.” Which is going to be a problem because Jacob is treated in Egypt as—how is he treated in Egypt, Brent?

Brent: Pretty well.

Marty: Joseph is obviously Egyptian royalty, but Jacob’s going to get a really great Egyptian burial. The Text tells us Pharaoh’s prepared to give him this amazing state funded funeral with pomp and circumstance. That Rashi quote, Joseph was Egyptian royalty and furthermore, “he had been captured and lived among heathens yet he remained steadfast in his righteousness.” There’s something about Jacob saying, “I don’t want the Egyptian funeral. I don’t want that.” He’s trying to tell Joseph, “This isn’t the story. You have to promise me. I don’t want to settle for Egypt. You have to promise me you won’t settle for Egypt.”

Fohrman, in his book, The Exodus You Almost Passed Over does this great job of like, he really draws out the drama of, when Joseph goes to Pharaoh and says, “Thanks, but no, thanks” on the Egyptian funeral. “Thanks, but no, thanks. We’d rather go out to the desert, to the land of Canaan.” What’s that moment going to be like? How is Pharaoh going to respond to Joseph? Remember, Joseph has how many father figures in this story, Brent?

Brent: A couple.

Marty: He’s been able to live in this-- Towards the end of this story, when his family has reunited, he’s been able to live with both these stories. What Jacob does at the end of this story, when he leans on his staff at the head of the bed is he says, “Joseph, you’re going to have to choose which story you are ultimately truly a part of. Be about the story of Canaan, not the story of Egypt.”

Like the story of Esther. I love how Rabbi Fohrman keeps connecting everything to Esther—like the story of Esther, he’s going to have to stick his neck out. He’s going to have to put his life on the line here to go to Pharaoh and be like, “We really don’t want your Egyptian funeral and your Egyptian royalty. Thank you very much. We’d rather go have our funeral.” Yet to our surprise, to our unbelievable chagrin, Pharaoh does the exact opposite. You have some verses from Chapter 50, Brent. Can you read those for us? Tell us where you’re at?.

Brent: Starting in verse 7. Yossef went up to bury his father. All Pharaoh’s officials accompanied him; the dignitaries of his course and all the dignitaries of Egypt, besides all the members of Yossef’s household and his brothers and those belonging to his father’s household, only their children and their flocks and herds were left in Goshen.

Marty: How does Pharaoh respond to this request, Brent?

Brent: Rally the entire country.

Marty: He says, “You don’t want the funeral here at home? You want to go have the funeral elsewhere? How about I give you all of the pomp and the circumstance, all of the state-funded funeral—how about I give that to you and you take it wherever you want to go? How about I follow you out into the desert in the land of Canaan and let you bury your father?” Just a crazy response, a crazy amount of favor from the king of Egypt, from Pharaoh to do this. Go ahead and finish the passage you had, Brent.

Brent: I love this next text. Chariots and horsemen also went up with him. It was a very large company.

Marty: Yes, absolutely. The Text points out how big of a deal this is.

Brent: When they reached the threshing floor of Atad, near the Jordan, they lamented loudly and bitterly and there Yossef observed a seven-day period of mourning for his father. When Canaanites who lived there saw the mourning at the threshing floor of Atad, they said the Egyptians are holding a solemn ceremony of mourning. That is why that place near the Jordan is called Abel Mizraim.

Marty: Here’s this spoiler alert for anybody that wants to get Fohrman’s Genesis book. Here’s these closing paragraphs to the work here in Genesis. I love this about this passage. It’s so redeeming. It’s so good. It’s such a great closing to the book of Genesis that I never, ever appreciated until I read The Exodus You Almost Passed Over. Here’s the Genesis: the Parsha Companion from Fohrman.

“Jacob dies, and Joseph fulfills his promise. He leads a burial procession, an Egyptian state funeral, on a long journey back to Canaan, back to the cave of Machpelah. According to the Sages, however, something intriguing happens along the way. The Biblical Text tells us that before Jacob is buried, he’s eulogized in a place on the east bank of the Jordan with an odd name, it’s called Goren H’atad, which means a threshing floor surrounded by thorn bushes.

“Why is it called that? Rashi, quoting the Talmud, explains that the place gets its name because of something remarkable that happens at Jacob’s funeral. As the Sages of the Talmud tell it, during Jacob’s burial procession, all the kings of Canaan and the Princes’ of Ishmael assemble to ambush and attack the Israelites who had gathered at this spot to eulogize Jacob, but then the would-be attackers see something that makes them halt in their tracks.

Here’s Rashi from Sotah. This is his commentary on Genesis 50:10. “Rashi says, ‘Joseph’s crown was hanging on Jacob’s casket, and when they saw this, all these kings and princes stood up, put down their weapons and hung their own crowns on it and surrounded his casket with crowns like a threshing floor, surrounded by a fence of thorns.’

“What do the Sages mean to say with his cryptic story? Why are these kings attacking? What does the sight of Joseph’s crown make them all halt? Why does that sight make the kings halt their attack and join their crowns to his? Consider this: who exactly do the Sages say are attacking the children of Jacob? They aren’t just any random attackers. They are the kings and princes of Canaan and Ishmael.”

Think back to the founding fathers of these nations. I’ll just ask you, Brent. I’ll quit reading Fohrman here for a moment. Who is Canaan and Ishmael? Canaan, let’s do him first.

Brent: Canaan comes from the line of Noah from Ham.

Marty: In particular, Canaan was the one who was?

Brent: Cursed.

Marty: Cursed in the great curse from Noah. What about Ishmael?

Brent: The other son of Abraham who turned out not to be the son of the promise.

Marty: And was sent away with Hagar, right?

Brent: Right.

Marty: Let’s pick up with Fohrman here. “Canaan was the son of Noah, cursed and thrown out of the family. Ishmael was the son of Abraham also thrown out of his family. Both of these are dispossessed children, now come to attack other children. Children of their own father, children that their own fathers had loved and legitimized. Shem was accepted by Noah. Isaac, a descendant of Shem, was accepted by his father Abraham. Now, generations later, as the descendants of all the accepted children gather for Jacob’s funeral, the kings of Ishmael and Canaan, the dispossessed children, come to attack them, but then something halts them in their tracks, the crown of Joseph hanging over the coffin of Jacob.

“Joseph was a child who thought himself dispossessed too, but when he had his chance, Joseph didn’t do away with the accepted children. He clawed his way somehow back into the family. It took years, but he made it. When the fateful moment came for him to choose, with all your wealth, power, and prestige, are you a son of Pharaoh or a son of Jacob, whose family do you call your own? Joseph chose his own family, the family of Israel, with all the difficulty that that choice entailed. Joseph buries Jacob in Canaan. In doing so, he puts his crown as it were on his father’s casket. Joseph puts his crown, his prestige, his favor with Pharaoh at risk for his father.

“As the Midrash puts it, ‘When the kings of Canaan and Ishmael saw that crown, they stopped the attack and, with humility, joined their crowns to Joseph’s.’ Only Joseph holds the moral force to take the venom out of an attack of dispossessed children. Remember, not only does he fend off these kings, he wins them over. They join their crowns to his. One wonders if the Talmud is painting a picture, not only of the past, but of a possible future. A future where there is hope for reconciliation, between Israel and the descendants of dispossessed children who make up Israel’s extended, but estranged family.

“If after all the pain and anger and misunderstanding of the past, Joseph can solemnly give Jacob honor, if after everything he can wed his destiny to that of his family, then perhaps other fragments of dispossessed families can find, in Joseph, an example to emulate. If Joseph can make it back, perhaps there’s hope for them too.”

Just love that. The idea, like we said, in Session 1, the power of forgiveness, the power of clawing their way back into a story by laying down their life, laying down their power, laying down their prestige, laying down their comfort, laying down their opportunity, laying down their privilege for the sake of others and somehow it brings redemption to the whole rest of the story. The Talmud says even more than you realize. If the power of Noah’s curse is that you can create so much damage, so much destruction, so much evil, so much vengeance, so much discord, the book of Genesis ends—the Talmud suggests, I shouldn’t say it says—the Talmud suggests that the story of Genesis ends with the power of what forgiveness can do. The power of reconciliation and redemption, it has the ability to undo all the curses of vengeance.

I don’t know if there’s any relevance to that with our stories today, Brent. I don’t know if there’s anything in our world where, if we chose to lay down our crowns, our comfort, our power, we could help somebody. I don’t know if that’s relevant.

Brent: It’s a pretty old book. Who can say?

Marty: I love your response in the midst of all that. [chuckles]

Brent: I would say the first time we recommended The Exodus You Almost Passed Over was in our episode, I think it was 19, where we are talking about the plagues which is, from the title of the book, you think, “That’s the obvious place to talk about it.” The book does have some really cool stuff about this portion of Genesis as well. I would recommend picking that up if you did not when you went through Session 1.

Marty: Yes, absolutely. It just makes me, you know—there’s a whole bunch of talk about crown and thorns in there. This makes me think about crowns and thorns. There’s just got to be—I just really feel like there’s something there, there’s a model for us to consider. There’s a call for us to give thought to. Anyway, those are just my—I feel like there’s a model here. I think Joseph can teach us something about 21st century America, but I could be crazy.

Brent: Are you saying that the Bible is like one big narrative with recurring themes and stuff?

Marty: I’ve been known to suggest such things.

Brent: Fascinating. We’ll let the listener ponder that. If you want to get a hold of Marty, you can find him on Twitter at @martysolomon. I’m at @eibcb. Of course, you can go to bemadiscipleship.com. Check out the show notes for this episode. Buy some books if you want to dig in deeper to these stories. I know we cover a lot of stuff but there’s still so much more. These stories are just—the more I think about it, I really feel like—I shouldn’t say this, but I feel like Genesis is my favorite book in the Bible because there’s so much stuff packed into this book. It’s a pretty big book but, like, man, the depths, there’s never-ending study to be done. Dig deeper if you have the opportunity.

Marty: You heard it here first, ladies and gentlemen—Brent Billings’s favorite book, Book of Genesis, Bereshith.

Brent: I really shouldn’t say that. Anyway, thanks for joining us on The BEMA Podcast. We’ll talk to you again soon.

[music]

Marty: Sorry, are you writing me a text message? I see thought bubbles.

Brent: Yes, I was trying to not be a distraction in the middle of the episode. This is something to remember for after the episode.

Marty: [laughs] It’s all good. That’ll make it into the blooper reel. I like that.

Brent: Foiled at every turn, I am.

Marty: Awesome. Let’s see here, what we’re talking about? His favorite brother—can you hear all those sirens in the background? I have, like, a massive parade of ambulances and fire trucks going.

Brent: I can’t really, but we can wait a moment.

Marty: That’s okay. They’re gone now.