Funny / The Bible

Yes, even The Bible has its share of comedy.

General:

• In a general sense, all of the moments listed below come from a very old set of scriptures, which is typically handled delicately and has been translated into some Purple Prose-esque modern versions. So, yes, you can and will end up reading an eloquent passage that's essentially Jesus getting exasperated at how dense his disciples are, people accusing the apostles of being drunk, and Haman backing himself into a corner, among other things.
• A meta example, try searching the word "ass" in the Bible. Since the word "ass" can also mean "donkey", it is used in some older versions of the Bible, but if you see it as the other kind of "ass", it's downright hilarious.
• The Hebrew language as a whole, and ancient Aramaic in general, is very fond of wordplay. For just one example of many, albeit one of the most noticeable examples, every single name has a double meaning; Biblical names are actual words, prior to language evolution eventually turning some of them into "just" homonyms. Case in point, "Adam" is the Hebrew word for "man", "Abram" means "exalted father", and "Abraham" means "father of many nations".^*Yes, this means that Abram essentially went around introducing himself as "my dad's a great guy", before God changed his name and he had to go around introducing himself as "I'm the father of many nations" instead. God had a habit of changing peoples names (see God naming Abram "Abraham", Jesus naming Simon "Peter", and giving each of His followers a brand new name in Revelation), and using wordplay in general. Which, if you think about it, means that God is the original Pungeon Master.
  • On the subject of God changing peoples' names, most of the new names are completely unfitting. It's an example of God calling things that are not as though they are to build up peoples' faith so they're able to receive the new name, by making them to prophesy that thing over themself whenever they use their new name. But still, telling a centenarian to introduce himself as the father of many nations when he has no kids and both he and his wife are too old to have kids? Or telling Simon to introduce himself as "rock", being the paragon of stability that he was? It's low-key kinda hilarious, right up until the name comes true.

Old Testament:

• This little snippet from Genesis, as Yahweh is looking for Adam:
  "And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?"
• Genesis 25:29-34, where Esau sells his inheritance to Jacob... for a bowl of soup. Presumably, Jacob was just trying to stop Esau from taking his food, but Esau insists that his birthright is useless when he's "dying" of hunger (and "gimme me some of that red red stuff"). The incident gives him the Embarrassing Nickname Edom.^note Meaning "red", since the soup he bought from Jacob was red lentil stew.
• There are three incidents in Genesis where a traveling patriarch claims his wife is his sister so foreigners won't be tempted to Murder the Hypotenuse, whereupon a foreign king falls for the "sister" and nearly commits accidental adultery. The first two times, the Pharaoh and Abimelech are warned off Sarah by divine intervention. The third time, though, Abimelech (the same one?) looks out a window and catches Isaac and Rebekah making out.
  And, behold, Isaac was sporting with Rebekah his wife.
  • Abimelech's response boils down to "Would you guys stop doing that!?" He then lets it be known that "anyone who harms this man or his wife will be put to death."
• Joseph tells the two men in prison with him what is possibly the oldest recorded pun in history while explaining their dream interpretations: One gets his head lifted up, the other gets his head lifted off! Even better is that both interpretations start with the same seven words in Hebrew^note B'od sh'loshet yamim Far'oh et ro'sheka.... You can just see the baker smiling as he hears the same words that began the cupbearer's dream... then it falls as he realizes it's taken a much darker turn.
  • The English Standard Version maintains this. Joseph says to the cupbearer: "In three days Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore you to your office, and you shall place Pharaoh's cup in his hand as formerly, when you were his cupbearer." And says to the baker "In three days Pharaoh will lift up your head—from you!—and hang you on a tree.”
  • That isn't even the first pun that story. When it says that Joseph's brothers hated him even more^note Genesis 37:5 & 8, it uses a word of the same root as his name.
• Moses, having been given his "Let my people go" speech by God complains he's a terrible public speaker. In modern parlance:
  God: You do remember I'm the reason you can talk in the first place?
  Moses: Please, someone else!
  God: Fine! Here comes your brother Aaron. Tell him what to say..
• Otaku might call Moses' first confrontation with Pharaoh "the world's first Pokémon battle".
  • There's also the possibility the original Hebrew word for what Aaron's staff ^note (as Aaron was helping his brother and was a better public speaker) turned into, "Tannin" actually meant not snake but crocodile as the word can mean either. One can imagine the instant Oh, Crap! the priests had when their attempts to confront the 6 meter reptile in the room resulted in two little snakes.
  • From that same book in the Old Testament, Robin Williams suggested that the rain of frogs may have been Hebrews with catapults flinging them. And thank goodness it wasn't the French or else they'd be trapped.
    France: Lunch! Okay, why should we let you go? You're great caterers, I can't let you go, you crazy people!
  • Speaking of the plagues, those magicians were kind of idiots, weren't they? "Great. Just what we needed. More blood in place of water." "And frogs." They even tried with the lice/gnats/ticks/whatever, but couldn't. They do get the point and stop trying, though, and after boils stop them from standing before Moses, we just don't hear from them again.
• The actual wording when the Pharaoh deploys his soldiers to capture the escaping Israelites in Exodus. He's mentioned as sending six hundred of the best chariots in Egypt, along with all the rest of the chariots in Egypt.
  • Well, duh! Everyone knows you're supposed to send the pawns last!
  • One can imagine this as the exact way Pharoh said it:
    Pharaoh: Send six hundred of my best chariots after them!
    Scribe: [scribbles furiously]
    Pharaoh: Actually... No. Send All of Them.
    Scribe: All of Them?
    Pharaoh: All of Them.
    Scribe: ...Crud. I've already written down six hundred...
    Pharaoh: Are you falsifying my orders?
    Scribe: ...Aaaand the rest.
• Numbers 22. Balaam's donkey starts talking to him. Balaam answers back like it's nothing out of the ordinary.
• Deuteronomy 25:7-10 tells of the punitive ceremony for a man who refuses to marry (and thereby support) his brother's widow. It involves her taking off his shoe and spitting in his face. This is still performed in Orthodox Jewish communities (non-punitively, as marrying your brother's widow is generally discouraged); there are regulations addressing what qualifies as a shoe for ritual purposes.
• Deuteronomy also has one about how a woman who has grabbed a man's junk out of anger should have the hand cut off.
  Show her no pity.
• Judges 15:4-5 — "So Samson caught 300 foxes. He tied them together in pairs by their tails. Then he fastened a torch between their tails. He set the torches on fire and released the foxes in the Philistines' grain fields. So he set fire to all their grain, whether it was stacked or in the fields. Their olive orchards also caught on fire."
  • Not as funny if you remembered why he did it and what happened afterward.
• Judges 15:16 (NIV)—"Then Samson said, 'With a donkey's jawbone I have made donkeys of them. With a donkey's jawbone I have killed a thousand men.'" Now go to the King James version and Have a Gay Old Time.
• Book of Judges 6:12 has an angel appear to call Gideon "a mighty warrior and man of valour". Gideon, at this point, is hiding in a wine-press in the hope that the enemies invading Israel don't notice him. This is sometimes interpreted as a You Are Better Than You Think You Are moment from the angel — but the other, more hilarious, interpretation is that the angel is being witheringly sarcastic.
• In 1 Samuel 6, the Philistines, stricken with plagues of mice and tumors, decide to return the Ark of the Covenant to Beth-Shemesh, an Israelite settlement, along with a gold offering for their trespass. The priests tell them that if the cows drawing the cart go one way, that means they did well, and God would be appeased. If it went another way, it meant they had misinterpreted the plagues, and God wasn't responsible so they could take the Ark back. Instead, the cows went neither way, plowing straight through a field with the Philistines hilariously chasing after them.
• Elisha's encounter with a large group of young bandits in the Book of Kings. A prophet of God brutally and remorselessly murdering the bandits by summoning bears to devour them? Horrifying. Him doing all that because they mocked him for being bald? Hilarious. Even more so in the translations where it comes off as though he's siccing the bears on children.
• The festival of Purim and the telling of the Book of Esther is like going to The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Audiences have props, speak along with the verses, and boo the crap out of Haman whenever his name is mentioned.
  • Haman really gets it good at one point. So, his plan to murder thousands of Jews is well underway. However, the king, while having a record read to him before bed, is told of how Mordecai, Haman's greatest enemy, saved his life from assassins once, and realises he never did anything to thank him. So, he asks Haman what should be done for a man the king wishes to honour. Haman thinks the king is going to honour him, and requests a massive parade, like, the biggest ever, with the man being honoured riding the king's own horse as another leads him, declaring, "This is the man the king wishes to honour!" And when he's finished speaking, the king agrees, and says that should be done for Mordecai. And Haman is the one who has to lead him about, declaring, "This is the man the king wishes to honour!" One can only imagine what his reaction must have been, knowing he just managed to give his greatest enemy a parade in his honour, which he must lead.
• Job 38:35: Can you send forth lightnings, that they may go and say to you, ‘Here we are’? Yea, we call it Telecommunication, or Telephone, or perhaps Television. The Internet, and TV Tropes itself, is also essentially this.
• Although the Book of Job really belongs on another page (read Tear Jerker) One character just has a goofy name. Job's friend is Bildad the Shuhite. That's pronounced Shoeheight. There is an old joke that he is the shortest man in the Bible next only to Nehemiah (knee-high mi ha) both are examples of a Captain Obvious Accidental Pun.
• David's numerous Prayers of Malice in the Book of Psalms, where he asks God to kill ne'er-do-wells. Who would have thought that any component of any holy book could be so unabashedly malicious?
• Chapter 13 of Jeremiah has a very interesting message from the Lord. He tells Jeremiah to go buy a linen loincloth, then put it on. Then He tells Jeremiah to take it off and leave it in water for a while, so that it won't fit. It actually includes the line "For as the loincloth clings close to the loins of a man, so I brought close to Me the whole House of Israel and the whole House of Judah that they might be My people". It's a very surreal comparison.
• In Ezekiel 23, God describes Israel's lack of obedience as prostitution in an extended metaphor. Things take a shockingly filthy and hilarious turn in verse 19: "Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses." Cracked.com points out that it says something about the Egyptians' reputation for endowment that in the middle of a "The Reason You Suck" Speech God makes sure to stop to note that they have huge penises.
• Hosea 3:1 God commands Hosea to go love his unfaithful wife.
  Then the LORD said to me, "Go again, love a woman who is loved by her husband, yet an adulteress, even as the LORD loves the sons of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes."
  • Although other, more modern, translations translate it as "getting drunk" or "worshipping other gods" (raisin cakes being a ritual offering to the goddess Asherah).
• The Book of Jonah, particularly the fourth chapter, where despite everything he's been through, and despite the fact that the Ninevites repented through a short, eight-word sermon, Jonah still mopes about how they should be destroyed. He is so petty about the whole ordeal, he wants God to just Get It Over With, especially when God gives him a plant to sit under and wait for the destruction... only to send a worm to destroy the plant the next day.
• At the end of the Book of Jonah, the way God defends His decision to not lay waste to Nineveh is rather humorous: "Should I care not about Nineveh, which has thousands of people who do not yet know their right from their left, and also much cattle!?"
  • Also, Jonah criticized God's mercy because he felt cheated out. Like, he endured a terrifying sojourn into a whale's belly and suddenly God wimps out?
• Isaiah 29:12 — "If you give the scroll to someone who cannot read, and say, 'Read this, please', they will answer, 'I don’t know how to read.'" Let it never be said the Bible doesn't provide practical advice.
• In Micah 2:11, the exasperated prophet berates the Israelites for only listening to false prophets who just tell them what they want to hear: "If a liar and deceiver comes and says, ‘I will prophesy for you plenty of wine and beer,' that would be just the prophet for this people!"
• Gideon heard about a dream of a giant loaf of bread destroying the enemy camp.
• Elijah joking to 450 prophets of Baal that their god is too busy taking a shower to help them. Funnier if you interpret "shower" as "pee".
  • It gets even more hilarious if you put it in historical and cultural context. Elijah wasn't simply trash-talking, but actually relating to both general Godly characteristics, and more exact aspects of Baal. The "pursuing" part was about Baal's one exact aspect: Historically, Baal was associated with weather and rain and cultists prayed to him for rain, especially during drought. If you missed some of that: Elijah was saying to cultists that rain was Baal pissing on them.
  • The word "busy" in the NIV or "pursuing" in the KJV in Elijah's taunt actually translates better into "pooping".
    • Another funny one from that story is that the prophets of Baal spent all day trying to burn the bull. When it finally comes time for Elijah to try and burn the sacrifice, he soaks the bull to the bone before immediately lighting it on fire.
• If you're in the right mood, the start of Jacob's family can be seen as this. Leaving aside, for the moment that it's his cousins, Jacob meets and falls in love with Rachel. He tells her father that he wants to marry her, and yes, WHY he wants to marry her. They strike a deal that he will work for 7 years. Jacob does this, marries his bride, takes her home and starts the honeymoon. It's not until the next morning that he realizes he actually married Leah, Rachel's sister. He works for seven more years to marry Rachel. And then the sisters start a very absurd war for his affection using pregnancy! At one point, when Rachel complains about not getting pregnant, you can see Jacob's frustration and fatigue with his answer, "What, do you think I'm God?"
  • Cousins, ha. Remember who his grandfather married? His half-sister. But recall that this is before the laws regarding who one may have sex with were codified, and when they were, cousins didn't make the "prohibited" list.
  • Those laws also prohibit a man from marrying his wife's sister - presumably, so commentators have noted, just to avoid any more such nonsense.
• Tamar. Not the daughter of David, the one whom Judah's sons married. The first one, Er, died of an unspecified sin^note Note also that "Er", ayin-resh, spelled backwards, is "ra", or "wicked", as in "But Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the Lord..."; his brother, who married her, died after "pulling out" before his seed could come out. Judah thought there was something wrong with her, so even though he told her to wait until his third son was grown, he delayed in giving her to him, so she dressed like a harlot, and waited on the side of the road, apparently knowing enough about Judah to know he'd pay her a visit. He offers her a goat as payment, and she asks for some collateral. He hands over his seal and cord. (At that time, this would be equivalent to his passport, credit report, and power of attorney all in one.) After he leaves, she goes back to her father's house. She gets pregnant from the encounter, and someone tells Judah, who's ready to have her stoned. She sends him his stuff and asks him to identify them (perhaps a way of saying, "It takes two to tango, dude", as well as being a mirror of what he and his brothers did in asking their father to identify Joseph's robe). He backs down.
• You wouldn't think the laws regarding leprosy would have anything funny in it (outside of maybe the mental image of a man having to cover his upper lip and call out, "Unclean! Unclean!"), but it has this to say about baldness:
  As for the man whose hair has fallen from his head, he is bald, but he is clean.
  • There is also the bizarre rule that a person with a skin disease is unclean, but if the disease spreads to cover his entire body completely, then the person is clean again.^*This is probably supposed to be a purity law, with the intent that blotches of differently-coloured skin are what makes the person unclean; having skin that's purely a single colour is clean, regardless of colour. And it also seems to only apply if the condition isn't contagious, since spreadable diseases would still be unclean because of other laws. Still pretty funny even in context, though.
  • On the subject of the Law, a lot of the laws regard purity, and are symbolic of how God's people, the Jews, are supposed to be completely separate from the world, and not supposed to mingle with the world. (And by extension, are to keep away from the worship and gods of the surrounding nations, and not mix God and pagan beliefs.) ...But if you miss the symbolic meaning and only see the literal, then you find things like, say, a ban on blended fabrics. Better kiss that cotton-polyester shirt goodbye!
• Before she became the prophet Samuel's mother, Hannah angsted so much about her inability to conceive that she went to the Temple and wept and prayed for a son. When he saw her, High Priest Eli thought she was drunk and bluntly said "lady, stop making a scene! Go home and get something against the hangover!".
• David cutting off a piece of Saul's robes as the latter was going to, ehm, empty his bowels might be a perfect lesson of mercy... until you remember one thing: caves have no ventilation. Meaning David is having to face the full stench of his would-be murderer's poo.
• Rebekah's pretext for sending Jacob off to her brother (and away from his extremely angry brother) is to find a suitable wife (Esau's two wives being considered extremely unsuitable). A Maligned Mixed Marriage is Serious Business back in the day, to be sure, but like her son Esau complaining that if he doesn't get some food right now he could just die, she complains to Isaac that if she gets one more Hittite daughter-in-law she could just die.

New Testament:

• Peter is very much the comic relief of the New Testament. He's argumentative, impetuous and has the ability to drop comments not exactly in keeping with the solemnity of the occasion that wouldn't be out of place in a Marvel movie. He's also, by tradition, the first Pope.
• The Transfiguration - Moses and Elijah turn up out of the blue and are talking with Jesus. Peter's first response is to suggest erecting tents for them.
  • God's "This is My Son, with whom I am well pleased" moment is explicitly noted as happening while Peter was still talking. God interrupted Peter!
• At the Last Supper, Peter initially refuses to let Jesus wash his feet... then suggests that Jesus wash his hands and head too.
• Gospel of Matthew 16: 5-12: The Disciples forgot to bring any bread with them, and they take Jesus' parable about the 'yeast of the pharisees' out of context.
  Jesus: "Don’t you remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many basketfuls you gathered? Or the seven loaves for the four thousand, and how many basketfuls you gathered? How is it you don’t understand that I was not talking to you about bread?"
  • They finally get he meant the teachings of the Pharisees.
• Matthew 21:18-19— "Early in the morning, as Jesus was on his way back to the city, he was hungry. Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it but found nothing on it except leaves. Then he said to it, 'May you never bear fruit again!' Immediately the tree withered." Theological meaning aside, just imagine Jesus yelling at a tree until it dies while the apostles all stand about awkwardly.
• John 1:46: Does anything good come from Nazareth?
• The first time they see Jesus walking on water, the Disciples outright freak out: "IT'S A GHOST!"
  • Peter decides to have a go... and ends up sinking.
  • It's even better than that. Peter's able to walk on water just like his rabbi at first, but when he becomes conscious of the wind and the waves, and the danger all around him, he starts to drown and Jesus has to save him. It's a classic metaphor for faith... That just so happens to resemble a classic Looney Tunes routine to modern readers.
• Luke 7:29 specifies that all the people accepted John was a prophet... even the tax collectors! It's even better in some translations, which write it as "all the people, and the tax collectors..."
• In Luke 11:37-54, a Pharisee invites Jesus over for supper, and Jesus takes the opportunity to lambast the Pharisees for their hypocrisy. One of the lawyers/legal experts/experts in the law points out that what He said was insulting them, too. And how does Jesus respond? He turns to the experts in the law and starts lambasting them, too. Or in other words, as one translation puts it...
  “Yes,” said Jesus, “what sorrow also awaits you experts in religious law! For you crush people with unbearable religious demands, and you never lift a finger to ease the burden." — Luke 11:46 (NLT)

• Jesus soundly sleeping on a boat is awoken by his Disciples crying out in fear, because there's an awful storm and they're currently living a real danger of sinking. Jesus yells at the storm to stop - it does - then lambasts the Disciples for disturbing his nap.
  • In short
    Jesus: Everyone, just shut up! Yes, that means you, storm! I'm trying to have a nap! >:(
  • This gets even funnier when you realize that by this point in the journey, they've already seen Jesus heal the injured and resurrect the dead. Of course Jesus was mad; the Disciples were so scared they'd convinced themselves that God would let His only son drown.
• How Jesus's first public miracle comes about: he and his mother are guests at a wedding. Mary points out that there's no more wine. Jesus asks what she wants him to do about it. Mary just turns to the servants and tells them to follow his instructions. Water turning into wine ensues, and it's the good stuff. (Cue host complaining that everyone knows you serve the good stuff first... and later serve cheap rotgut when everyone's too drunk to know the difference.)
• Jesus' response to a crowd attempting to stone him in John 10: "I have shown you many good works from my Father. For which of these are you trying to stone me?"
• John's account of the Resurrection involves himself and Peter racing to the tomb where Jesus' body was held. John makes a point to note that he got there before Peter did.
• Acts 2: On the Pentecost, the Disciples gain the ability to speak fluently in new languages. Unsurprisingly, this shocks many of the onlookers, some of whom conclude that they're simply drunk. However, Peter tells the crowd that it's too early for them to have been drinking, as it was only 9:00 AM.
• Acts 12:7: Evidently, Peter is such a deep sleep that the angel had to kick him in the ribs to wake him up, to break Peter out of prison. Peter thought he was dreaming and walked right past two sets of armed guards. When Peter finally realizes that he is not dreaming and is actually free, he heads back to the house with the rest of the disciples. A girl called Rhoda answers the door, and is so excited to hear that it's him that she immediately runs off to tell the other disciples. Completely forgetting to actually unlock the door and let Peter, who has just been miraculously rescued by an angel, in.
• Acts 19:13-16 - When several amateurs try to exorcise a demon by saying, "We adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preaches," the demon-possessed man says, "Jesus I know, and Paul I know about, but who are you?" and then proceeds to beat the crap out of them so that they fled naked and wounded.
  • Though another interpretation, which probably shouldn't be on this page, is that the demon-possessed guy raped them.
• Paul holds a sermon in a tower. It continues long into the night. A guy sitting in the window falls asleep and falls to his death. Paul casually strolls down and hurls himself at the guy, says "This man is not dead", revives him... and goes up to continue his speech until dawn.
• Paul derailing his own trial by inciting a theological argument amongst his Sadducee and Pharisee judges. One half, the Sadducees, don't believe in anything supernatural, whereas the Pharisees, which include Paul, do, so when Paul says he believes in the resurrection of the dead, the court is split into two camps and things get so bad that the Roman soldiers have to transfer him to Rome to hear his case.

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