God's Sixth Killing: God's seven year, world-wide famine

Damn! I guess I'm not done with Genesis yet.

As Wise Fool pointed out, God starved everyone on earth (except for those who could by food from Joseph) in Genesis 41. And I forgot to include it on the list of people killed by God. (But I've updated it now.)

And if I'm going to include it, I guess I have to tell you about it.

It's all about Joseph. There's a whole series of stupid Joseph stories in Genesis: Joseph's brothers throw him in a well; Joseph is rescued from the well and sold to Egyptians; Joseph goes to prison after being falsely accused of rape; Joseph interprets the dream of his cellmate; Joseph interprets the Pharaoh's dream.

The Bible isn't too clear on this, but as near as I can tell, God starved everyone on earth so that Joseph could become the most powerful person in Egypt by interpreting the Pharaoh's dream so that God could get the Israelites enslaved by Pharaoh and then rescue them by sending plagues on the Egyptians. Or something like that.

OK. That all makes perfect sense. But what was the Pharaoh's dream?

Well, there were these seven fat, good looking cows that came out of the Nile, followed by seven skinny, ugly cows. The skinny cows ate the fat ones.

Then Pharaoh had another dream. This time seven skinny heads of grain ate seven fat ones. (Don't you love how the Bible loves the number seven? Maybe that's because God has seven spirits.)

Nobody could interpret Pharaoh's dream. So they called Joseph. Joseph said it was simple. God was going to send seven good years followed by seven years of famine. And the famine would be world-wide and "very grievous."

Joseph said the Pharaoh should have the Egyptians store up food during the seven good years so they wouldn't starve (like everyone else) during the bad.

It all happened just like Joseph said it would. Pharaoh did what Joseph suggested and had Joseph oversee it all. And Joseph became the most powerful person in Egypt.

So things worked out well for Joseph, but not so well for everyone else.

When the famine struck, everyone on earth (including the Egyptians) had to buy their food from Joseph. If they couldn't make it to Egypt or didn't have enough money, they starved. It was all part of God's plan.

But how many people starved to death during God's seven year famine? I have no idea. But since the Bible says it was a "very grievous famine," I figure it must have been at least 10,000 or so. (Regular old famines, like regular massacres and plagues, score 1000.)

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Notes:

Decided that 10,000 was too low for a world-wide, seven year famine. So I increased the death toll to 70,000 -- 10,000 per year of famine.

This killing is highlighted in the Poverty and Justice Bible. I guess they figured that God's seven year, world-wide famine showed God's sense of justice and love for the poor.