Sarah did bear a son, and he was named Isaac. Unfortunately, this created a bit of a problem as far as the laws of primogeniture, which is to say, inheritance by the firstborn child, went. Sarah though, as resourceful as she was after 91 years, fired Hagar, and sent her and Ishmael out into the desert, which turned out to be not such a great idea, since the children of Ishmael would cause endless grief for the children of Isaac in the decades to follow.
This violation of primogeniture by Abraham became somewhat of a family tradition, much as modern-day families often favor those not related at all. Isaac inadvertently gave his blessing to his second-born son, Jacob, a deceitful, err, creative young man who coerced his blind father into so doing. Then later on, Jacob (who later became Israel when God was again picked on by Zeus for his boring selection of names), in turn, violated this unwritten law by favoring his son Joseph (his eleventh!) over his first ten; of course, Joseph was the first son to be borne by the wife he wanted, the other ten being mothered by his first wife, sister of the wife he wanted, and their handmaidens, though what exactly it was with these early men and their wives' handmaidens remains a mystery.
Unlike Jacob's brother Esau, and Ishmael before him, Joseph's brothers came up with a surprisingly ingenious way of dealing with their upstart younger sibling. They sold him to the Ishmaelites, who in turn sold him to a wealthy Egyptian. Now this Egyptian, one Potiphar by name, had a hot woman for a wife. Of course, this was Egypt and most people were hot, but this chick, she had it all. This nameless Egyptian hussy looked upon Joseph with interest, for the young muscular Joe was way more attractive than pot-bellied Potiphar. One day, Joseph was taking care of some business for Potiphar (his master had also taken a liking to the handsome young Israelite. Hmm...) Potiphar's wife then sauntered into her husband's office, where Joseph was, and sat down in Joseph's lap. Now Joseph was still unlearned in the ways of being fruitful, and in his virginal impatience, he ran from the room to fetch a condom; the bright lad knew enough about sex to know that he didn't want whatever diseases this lady had. Unfortunately for Joseph, Potiphar's wife took this as a rejection, and in her rage, accused Joseph of rape and had him thrown in jail. However, as it turned out, this was probably the best career move for Joey at the time.
It was while in jail that Joseph hooked up with these two blokes from the palace of the Pharaoh, a cupbearer, one who bore cups, and a baker, or one who cupped boars, no that was the butcher. Never mind. Anyway, Joe, the baker, and the cupbearer got to be quite chummy, and spent their mornings in the Big House telling each other dreams from the night before. One morning, the butler spoke up of a particularly interesting dream.
"I was wandering around naked in the garden of the Pharaoh when this vine grew out of the ground before me, and in a matter of moments, it budded and blossomed, and brought forth the most delicious grapes. Having Pharaoh's cup in my hand, I took some grapes and pressed them into the cup and flew back to Pharaoh upon my wings of pink gossamer and gave the cup to Pharaoh, and he drank from it.
'Now, my initial interpretation was that I have subconscious feelings of desire for the Pharaoh, so please buddy, tell me I'm wrong."
"Well," Joseph began, "I can see how you would interpret the vine to be phallic in nature, but my God, the One God, the True God, has told me that your dream means in three days, you will be restored to your position and forgiven."
Then the baker spoke, hoping to cash in on the apparent lucky streak. "I too had a dream. As was the case with my friend here, I was naked, and my mother was there. And on my head were three baskets, and in the baskets were a variety of pastries that my mother had made. And birds came, a great many birds, and they ate all the baked goods. And my mother comforted me."
"Well," Joseph began again, "all thoughts of Freud aside, your dream means that, well, how can I phrase this? In three days..."
"Yes? Yes?"
"...When the cupbearer is restored..."
"Yes? Yes?"
"... You will be executed, and your mother with you."
The baker wept. The butler smiled, and Joseph, knowing he was right, took the butler aside. "I am glad to see that my words have brought joy to you my friend, and I ask that when you are once again in the favor of Pharaoh, you will speak to him of me, and of my plight, that I may escape this prison to fulfil the destiny that my True God has laid out for me."
The butler couldn't make heads or tails out of Joseph's somewhat lengthy monologue, so he just nodded dumbly.
Three days later, Joseph was alone.
Two years after that, he was still alone, BUT the Pharaoh had had a disturbing dream, and the butler remembered Joseph, and Joseph was brought from the jail where he had spent years of imprisonment into the courtroom of the Great and Divine Pharaoh of the Egyptian Empire without even a chance to shower and shave.
"I had a dream, my young man, and my cupbearer here told me you are skilled at interpreting this sort of thing. If he's wrong, you'll both be fed to the Great Crocodile. But if he's right, you'll be rewarded immensely. What say you?"
Joseph swallowed, and opened his mouth to speak. Then swallowed again. Then again. Then spoke. "Tell me of your dream Almighty One."
"I dreamt that there were seven ears of corn upon one good stalk growing in my fields. And then came this monster corn, with ferocious teeth and claws and this corn destroyed the other. And then I woke up."
Joseph thought, and prayed. C'mon God, he murmured in the cavern of his head. I need you now.
Joseph's thoughts woke God up from a nap, and God was tired and angry. The Pharaoh's dream had been the result of eating too much spicy food just before bed, but now that God was up, he might as well have some fun.
God's words came out of Joseph's mouth. "Pharaoh dude, this is your dream. Seven good ears equals seven good... years, yeah, great idea, and your harvests will be bountiful and you will become wealthy. The bad ears represent a subsequent seven bad years, and your harvests will make the Sahara seem like paradise, and you will all starve. But hey, them's the breaks."
Pharaoh was flabbergasted, and Joseph, Jewish to the core, saw the economic possibilities in the dream, and quickly spoke up. "Hey Pharaoh, if you put me in charge over Egypt, I can make it so that we ration food for the first seven years, and will have enough left over to outlast the bad seven, and to sell it to everyone else who's starving and make a tidy profit on the side."
"Done!" Pharaoh exclaimed, and so it came to pass.
Seven years of plenty came and went in the blink of an eye, because time flies when you're having fun, and since the harvests were so good, fun in the form of infamous Egyptian orgies was pretty much all that there was to have. The next seven seemed to pass a great deal slower, because who felt like engaging in certain unmentionable sexual acts when you were starving?
The famine had hit Joseph's far-off homeland pretty hard, and Jacob in his wisdom decided to send his sons, the ones he didn't like anyway, off to Egypt to see if they could borrow several thousand shekels worth of grain. The roads to Egypt were dangerous, and involved crossing a certain not-yet-famous desert. While passing through this desert, one of Joseph's brothers, Rueben by name, happened to mention that he hated spending a few weeks in such a place, and wasn't it great that they didn't have to worry about spending forty years there? God heard this and laughed, because in his omniscience, he knew that Rueben's descendants, as well as those of the other brothers, Happy, Dopey, Bashful, etcetera, would spend at least forty years in that very desert.
Egypt arrived, not that there was much difference between it and the desert in those years of drought and famine. Even the mighty Nile was not much more than a trickle of crocodile spit. The brothers went before Joseph, who was by this time, the Great and Exalted Grand Vizier of Egypt, and whose regal clothing proved a thorough disguise. When Joe saw that the Canaanite petitioners were none other than his envious siblings, thoughts of revenge sprung into his mind, along with the painful memories of what he had experienced at the hands (and other anatomical parts) of the Ishmaelites.
"What do you want?" he asked them.
"If it pleases you, Almighty One, we would like some grain, for our families are starving," said Rueben, the ringleader.
Joseph threw them a single stalk.
"Please sir. I want some more."
"More? What audacity! What greed! You must be spies. A band of Canaanite terrorists come to perform some diabolical reconnaissance mission for some foreign potentate."
"No, actually, we are but brothers, the sons of one man. There used to be twelve of us, but the youngest is at home, and one is dead."
Dead? Joseph thought. Funny, I don't feel dead. Aloud, he said, "Then prove this story to me. Bring back the youngest, and I will give you grain."
"Please Oh Great Vizier. Might we at least buy a little grain, that we might feed our families with it while we trek back and forth over yon great desert?" It was Levi who spoke this time, the long-winded brother destined to father a line of priests, and a profitable jean company.
"You may. Speak to my receptionist on your way out." Joseph turned to go, paused, then turned back. "You," he said, pointing at the brother he knew as Simeon, "you will stay here as a token of goodwill. If your brothers do not return before I tire of this whole test, you will be fed to the Great Crocodile."
So Simeon stayed, and the rapidly dwindling number of brothers returned to Canaan, picked up Benjamin the youngest, and then went all the way back to Egypt, where they were ushered before Joseph without being given time to catch their breath.
"So this is Benjamin." Joseph was overcome with emotion, for Benjamin was the son of his own mother. "I see you spoke the truth. Join me then for a dinner, and we will celebrate me not killing you all."
But Joseph was not done his trickery yet. While the brothers prepared to leave Egypt, their donkeys laden with grain, Joseph sneaked out the back door of the pyramid and hid his favorite coffee mug in Benjamin's sack. As soon as the brothers left, he called his guards and sent them after the thieves. Back to Egypt they came, but by this time, Joseph was weary of the whole undercover operation, and told them all the truth, and then laughed when they began stammering out apology after apology.
"Oh shut up, the lot of you," he chuckled. "Go back to our father, and bring him and all your families here, that I might feed you and house you, and we shall all live in the prosperity that your jealousy gave to us."
And so it happened. Even after the famine ended, thoughts of returning to a desolate country like Canaan were rejected immediately; why go back and work for a living when they could stay in Egypt and live like kings?