Genesis 48-50: All good things must end. This too.

Chapters 48

Joseph gets word the old man is dying and rocks up with his two sons Mnasseh and Ephraim.

Jacob/Israel says he's hearing voices again

Verse 4 “And said unto me, Behold, I will make thee fruitful, and multiply thee. And I will make of thee a multitude of people and will give this land to thy seed after thee for an everlasting possession.”

And he's blind so can only touch the kids faces, but puts the wrong hand on the wrong kid's head (should be right for older, left for younger) and does the blessing and dishing out.

Verse 17 “And when Joseph saw that his father laid his right hand upon the head of Ephraim it displeased him: and he held up his father's hand to remove it from Ephraim's head unto Mannasseh's head”

No dice of course, from Jacob, who knows a thing or two about dodgy successions, having pinched his brother Esau's rights.

Verse 19 “And his father refused, and said, I know it, my son, K know it: he also shall become a people,and he also shall be great: but truly his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his seed shall become a multitude of nations.”

So, no over-population issues there then...

Chapter 49

So Jacob on his death bed dishes the dirt publicly on all 12 of his sons. Anyone seen “Festen”, that great Danish film that contains a mother doing the same in true Danish style to her kids? Passive-aggressive sliminess to the nth degree.

Reuben's primal scene causes him grief

Verse 4 “Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel: because thou wentest up to thy father's bed: then defiledst thou it: he went up to my couch."

Simeon and Levi get labelled for the bloodthirsty psychos they are

And so it goes on- and on. Read it and yawn.

Verse 33 “And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost and was gathered unto his people.”

About. Bloody. Time.

Chapter 50

Mourning. Pharaoh's permission to bury Israel/Jacob up north. Shifting the body. More mourning, burying etc.

Verse 15 “And when Joseph's brethren as that their father was dead, they said Joseph will peradventure hate us and will certainly requite us all the evil which we did unto him.”

Ah, the old family-as-Yugoslavia-as-powder-keg-when-Tito-dies. It's a story as old as the, erm, Bible...

And Joseph tells them to chill

Verse 19 “... Fear not, for am I in the place of God? But as for you,ye thought evil against me: but God meant it unto good to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.”

Joseph sticks around in Egypt and sees (great?) grandchildren.

Verse 26 “So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.”

And so ends one of the longest books in the Bible, which has taken two and a half bally weeks to read. As will Psalms, Jeremiah and Ezekiel.

What have I learnt? Erm, not to trust any of these guys as far as you can throw them. It's all cheating, lying, smiting etc. [Ed: Gee, profound.]