Exodus 32:31-32
Then Moses returned to the Lord and said, “Oh, these people have committed a great sin, and have made for themselves a god of gold! Yet now, their sin was a joke. Jesus. They were kidding – but if not, I pray, blot me out of Your book which You have written.”
Leviticus 4:26
And he shall burn all his fat upon the altar, as the fat of the sacrifice of peace offerings: and the priest shall make an atonement for him as concerning his sin, and it shall be acknowledged by all the people in the assembly that he was just joking around, God, have you never heard a joke before? Don’t take everything so seriously.
Numbers 15:25-26
And the priest shall make an atonement for all the congregation of the children of Israel, and it shall be forgiven them; for they were only kidding: and they shall bring their offering, a sacrifice made by fire unto the Lord, and their sin offering before the Lord, to apologize for making a joke I guess, sorry for trying to lighten the mood:
And it shall be acknowledged among all the congregation of the children of Israel that lighten-up-it-was-a-joke, and the stranger that sojourneth among them; seeing all the people were just trying to cut through the tension. Guess I’ll stop trying to make you laugh, like, ever again.
Joshua 24:19
And Joshua said unto the people, Ye cannot serve the Lord: for he is an holy God; he is a jealous God; he will not lighten up about your transgressions nor your sins, even though it was a joke and literally everyone else gets that you didn’t mean it because you were K I D D I N G.
1 Kings 8:30
And hearken thou to the supplication of thy servant, and of thy people Israel, when they shall pray toward this place: and hear thou in heaven thy dwelling place: and when thou hearest, let it go because it was a joke and you take everything so seriously, it honestly makes people afraid to even talk around you.
Psalm 25:18
Look upon mine affliction and my pain; and calm down. I was kidding.
Daniel 9:19
O Lord, hear; O Lord, relax about it; O Lord, hearken and laugh it off; defer not, for thine own sake, O my God: for thy city and thy people are called by thy name and they were only joking.
Matthew 6:12
And laugh off our jokes, as we laugh off the jokes we hear about us.
Look upon mine affliction and my pain; and calm down. I was kidding.
I’m gonna learn how to needlepoint so I can put this on a pillow…
i… i think this is the first time i can say i identify with god in this scenario?
I have such a hate-hate relationship with the “it was a joke” attitude. I’m sure there’s legitimate uses but my father lives by that phrase. Don’t take what he says seriously enough? You’re disrespectful. Take it seriously? Lighten up, it was just a joke! You’re too emotional, really, what is it, that time of month?.
Grr. Actions have consequences and if the only person amused is you then it’s not a joke.
And of course, if I ever turned it around on him then it was pure disrespect and in terrible taste. Because of course.
“Geez man, we were just trolling. We’ll put that apple back right were it was, ok? No need to overreact.”
Oh Lord this makes me want to crawl out of my skin. Especially since I’ve been teaching forgiveness to college students recently, like, a bunch.
If you agree with them, it’s not a joke. If you don’t, it is. They never learned how to read a room, so they’re probably going to be “joking” most of the time.
This makes me think – are there examples of any jokes in the Bible? Like real jokes, not “let’s sell him and then pretend a wild animal killed him for the lulz.” I can’t think of anything….? Seems weird, as humor is such a central part of the human condition and all.
Isn’t there that bit in John where someone says ‘Lo, Jesus of Nazareth is coming, he’s a cool guy, you should for sure check him out,’ and ya man is all like ‘WOAH YOU’RE TELLING ME SOMETHING GOOD CAME OUT OF NAZARETH?’ which is perhaps not the height of killing wit but is a fairly classic yo-hometown-so-shitty throwaway gag.
there are emoticons in the king james bible. i try to read them as jokes.. for example!!::::
And the unclean spirits went out, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea, (they were about two thousand;) and were choked in the sea. — mark 5:13
There were also women looking on afar off: among whom was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the less and of Joses, and Salome; (Who also, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and ministered unto him;) — mark 15:40-41
When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was: (but the servants which drew the water knew;) — john 2:9 (a frown AND a wink!!)
There’s some serious humor in there. Most of it pretty dry and sarcastic and a decent portion of it comes from Luke’s writings (Luke and Acts). My favorite is the story in Acts where this early church group is praying for Peter to get out of prison. Meanwhile, an angel appears, lets him out, pretty much leads him by the hand to the house with the prayer group, and drops him off. Peter stands there dazed and then knocks and a servant girl, Rhoda (love that they give her name) answers and is so excited to see him, she slams the door in his face and runs back to tell everyone. Who promptly tell her to shove it, that’s not him, now let them pray for him in peace. All while the poor guy is standing on the street, probably thinking, hey, prayer was answered, I’m hungry and tired so let me in already. There’s an argument about it for a bit before someone actually thinks to go check. At that point things get sorted but it’s all told just dryly enough that you can’t help but think Luke found it hysterical.
There’s no actual jokes that come to mind, not like “so two rabbis walk into a bar” sort, but there’s decided and intentional humor in a number of the stories.
Judges 15:16 (NIV) has this little gem:
“With a donkey’s jawbone I have made donkeys of them. With a donkey’s jawbone I have killed a thousand men.”
Replace “donkey” with “ass” and that’s pretty good. Unfortunately, this is only in the New International Version. Most of the other translations have “heaps upon heaps” instead of “I have made donkeys of them”, which is much more boring (although there are a few variants, like the Old McDonald version found in the International Standard Version—”here a heap, there a pair of heaps”—and the Sesame Street Count version from the Jubilee Bible 2000—”one heap, two heaps”). Interestingly, Young’s Literal Translation translates this phrase as “an ass upon asses”, which seems pleasingly close to the NIV’s version in content, and close to the rest in sentence structure. Sadly, I don’t know anything about Hebrew, so I can’t attest to what this ought to be. But it’s funny!
This is everything.
There’s a bit in 1 Kings where Elijah and a bunch of Baal-worshippers are having a standoff and they’ve each built a pyre and they’re waiting for their respective gods to set them on fire and Baal’s pyre is not lighting up at all and Elijah starts getting snarky like “Hey, it’s okay. Try shouting louder? Maybe he’s having a nap, idk. Maybe he’s gone out for a bit, you know what those gods are like.”
And there’s another bit where the Israelites just left Egypt and they’re getting annoyed about not having enough variety in the food they’re being miraculously sent every night and saying ‘well we might as well GO BACK TO EGYPT THEN’ and God is clearly 100000000% done with them because in response he sends them what I think amounted to 1.6 tonnes of dead quail. They just. Drop out of the sky overnight. God is such a passive-aggressive asshole in this bit it’s great.
And then there’s Jesus, who likes to tell dad jokes like ‘let those who have EARS to hear, listen!’ before launching into a story about ears of corn.
So it’s not the absolute height of humour, definitely. But it’s there.
I WILL CALL YOU PETER, AND YOU WILL BE THE ROCK idk i don’t have it memorised. “you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church” Anyway, Jesus made puns.
(Does the ears [of corn] work in Aramaic?
Matthew 6:12 revamped brings to mind my favorite Mr. Bennet-ism: “For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?”
This has been another edition of Jane Austen Wittily Interprets the Gospel.
Great Post.
This would prove very handy around Yom Kippur. (Unless it’s an Old Testament New Testament thing, and jokes weren’t invented until after Moses or something.)
What about Mount Carmel when Elijah seems to imply that "their" god is taking a dump as well as other good mocking 🙂 1 Kings 18:27