amalekite
Explanation
The Joke
A person is praying to God, referencing the biblical commandment to slay the Amalekites and asking whether this directive still applies: "Do we still need to do that? That'd be a lot. It'd be done by now." God's response, after a pause ("What?"), reveals that it has been 100 generations since the original command, and that Amalekite genes are now diffused throughout a massive portion of humanity. God concedes that targeting Amalekites at this point would essentially mean killing a huge portion of everyone on Earth.
The person then asks, "Isn't that what you gave us nuclear weapons for?" -- misinterpreting (or darkly reinterpreting) the purpose of nuclear weapons as divinely ordained genocide. God tries to redirect the conversation: "Can we change the subject?" The person then pivots to asking about God's other interests, to which God says something about turning dark matter into the universe, and the conversation ends with the person being even more unsettled.
The Humor
The comic finds dark humor in taking a biblical commandment literally and following it to its logical modern conclusion. If God really did command the destruction of the Amalekites thousands of years ago, and nobody followed through, then by now intermarriage and genetic diffusion would mean that "Amalekite genes" are everywhere -- making the commandment essentially a call for universal genocide. The joke escalates by having the human casually suggest nuclear weapons as the solution, treating weapons of mass destruction as a divine tool kit. God's discomfort and desire to change the subject is the comedic highlight, portraying a deity who regrets His earlier, more wrathful pronouncements.
References
- In the Hebrew Bible (1 Samuel 15), God commands King Saul to destroy the Amalekites entirely. This passage has been a source of significant theological and ethical debate for centuries.
- The concept of genetic diffusion over many generations is scientifically sound -- after 100+ generations, any ancient population's genes would indeed be widely distributed across modern populations.