And Joseph saw his brothers and recognized them, and he played the stranger to them and spoke harshly to them.
“You can’t go down this street no more!”
“Gather round, that I me tell you what shall befall you in the days to come.”
Well, it’s nice to see you too, Ben. It’s nice to see everyone here…
”Should a man set aside a votieve offering in the value fixed for persons to the Lord, the value for the male from twenty years old up to sixty years old shall be fifty shekels…”
Caitlin had sometimes wondered what Taylor might look like with his shirt off. Now she found out.
”Count the heads of all the community of the Israelites by their clans, by their fathers’ houses, according to the number of names, every male by their heads.”
“Latrine duty AGAIN? Why do you give latrine duty to me and rob every single week?”
”Any party whose wife has… had carnal relations with her unbeknown to her husband…that party shall bring his wife to the priest… And in the priest’s hands shall be the water of bitterness that induces the spell…. Once he has made her drink the water—if she has defiled herself by breaking faith with her husband, the spell-inducing water shall enter into her to bring on bitterness, so that her belly shall distend and her thigh shall sag; and the wife shall become a curse among her people.”
“Oh, boy, I think I gotta be goin’. Last night Jennifer and I celebrated our anniversary. We went out to a two-star Michelin restaurant, gorged ourselves on food and wine, had a great evening alone together, and now I’m paying the price.”
And Moses said to the Lord, “Why have You done evil to Your servant, and why have I not found favor in Your eyes, to put the burden of all this people upon me?”
When New York arts journalists asked “The Prophet”, Vic Fine, what dreams he had for his theater company, his stock answer was “My hope is that it flourishes and can touch as many hearts as possible.” Vic’s wife Hannah knew that what Vic really wanted was to shut the whole thing down.
”And they put forth an ill report to the Israelites of the land that they had scouted saying ‘The land through which we passed to scout is a land that consumes those who dwell in it, and all the people whom we saw in it are men of huge measure.'”
It has taken me over twenty-one years before I was finally allowed inside my father’s brownstone in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, and now only because I’m here to sit shiva for him in the days after his death.
”And Balak said, “What have you done to me? I took you to curse my enemies, and, look, you have done nothing but bless.”
Arguments about women’s equality with men probably go back at least to some pillow talk that Mark Antony had with Cleopatra over a bowl of grapes, but in the nineteen seventies it seemed that this was the only thing adults ever talked about.
”And the Lord spoke to Moses saying “Phinehas…turned away My wrath from the Israelites when he zealously acted for My zeal in their midst.”
All communities are peaceful until they’re not.
