pray-2
Explanation
The Joke
A man is praying in bed at night: "Dear God, it's Steve. I'm... having lustful thoughts again." God responds with exasperation: "We've talked about this. No praying while wearing a thong." Steve, undeterred, continues provocatively: "Be a shame if I... deserved a scourging." God, increasingly frustrated, says: "Dammit, man, I don't even know which afterlife would punish you!" In the final panel, Steve is on his knees begging: "Smite me, Lord! Oh, smite my ass like a firstborn Egyptian child!"
The Humor
The comic takes the concept of prayer — normally a solemn, reverent act — and turns it into an unwanted sexual advance directed at God. Steve is not genuinely seeking divine guidance; he is using prayer as a vehicle for his masochistic kink, treating God like a reluctant participant in his BDSM fantasy. The religious language of "scourging" and "smiting" is reframed as erotic rather than punitive.
God's reaction is that of an increasingly uncomfortable person being sexually harassed, which is funny because God is typically depicted as omnipotent and unflappable. The line "I don't even know which afterlife would punish you" suggests that Steve's behavior is so uniquely deviant that no established theological framework has accounted for it — he has found a gap in the divine punishment system.
The final line, "Smite my ass like a firstborn Egyptian child," is a reference to the tenth plague of Egypt from the Book of Exodus, in which God killed the firstborn children of Egypt. Repurposing this horrifying biblical event as dirty talk is the comic's most extreme escalation, blending the sacred and the profane in a way that is both shocking and absurd.
Broader Context
SMBC frequently depicts God as a character who has to deal with the bizarre consequences of the system He created. The comic plays on the observation that much religious language — submission, punishment, ecstasy, being "on your knees" — has an unintentional double meaning when viewed through a sexual lens. This overlap between religious and erotic language has been noted by scholars of mysticism, particularly in analyses of figures like St. Teresa of Avila, whose descriptions of divine ecstasy are strikingly sensual.