Chapter Thirty-Nine

Joseph in the House of Potiphar

Genesis 39:1. Now Joseph was taken down to Egypt. And Potiphar, an Egyptian officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard, bought him from the Ishmaelites who had brought him down there. After a certain digression, chapter 38, from the thread of the narrative about Joseph (Gen 37:36), the sacred writer continues the history of the latter. If in Canaan, as the history of Judah in chapter 38 shows, the descendants of Abraham faced the danger of drawing near and even merging with the Canaanites, then the taking of Joseph to Egypt, which ultimately brought about the settlement of all of Jacob’s descendants in Egypt, foreshadowed the necessity for the development and entering of the divinely chosen tribe into the communion of the Lord under exceptional conditions of life in Egypt, where the descendants of Jacob, on one hand, borrowed many benefits of Egyptian civilization, but on the other hand, by their considerable isolation from the Egyptians (who despised the Hebrews and other nomads, Gen 43:32), were able to preserve their national wholeness and purity of religious heritage.

Genesis 39:2. And the Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man; and he was in the house of his Egyptian master. The expression “the Lord was with Joseph” Jewish interpreters understand to mean that, separated from his father and native family, Joseph constantly had God in his thoughts and heart, and therefore God, as a heavenly Father, showed him special care (the Midrash makes a comparison, recalling the parable of the Lord about God’s care for one lost sheep more than for the ninety-nine that did not go astray). “In the house of his master,” that is, according to Jewish interpretation, was not compelled to do menial (agricultural) work.

Genesis 39:3–4. And his master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord caused all that he did to prosper in his hands. So Joseph found favor in his sight and attended him; and he made him overseer of his house and put him in charge of all that he had. God’s blessing upon Joseph and his works does not escape the notice of his heathen master (verse 3), as God’s blessing upon Isaac was noticed by the Philistines (Gen 26:28); upon Jacob—by Laban (Gen 30:27), and he clothed him with full trust and authority in the house and made him overseer of his servants (in Rome such an overseer was called atriensis; overseers of this kind are often found depicted in Egyptian sculptures, cf. Matt 24:45-47; Luke 12:42-44).

Genesis 39:5. And from the time that he made him overseer of his house and of all that he had, the Lord blessed the Egyptian’s house for Joseph’s sake; the blessing of the Lord was on all that he had, in house and field. “Wherever the righteous go, the Shekhinah goes with them,” remarks the Midrash regarding the words of the sacred writer about the blessing of Potiphar’s house for Joseph’s sake.

Genesis 39:6. So he left all that he had in Joseph’s charge; and, with him there, he had no concern for anything except the food that he ate. Now Joseph was handsome and good-looking. Seeing the particular success of his affairs from Joseph’s arrival in his house, Potiphar entrusted him with all the conduct of life, “except (only) the bread that he ate.” This last expression Rashi understood as a euphemism for the representation concerning Potiphar’s wife. Others see here an indication that Potiphar, as an Egyptian (Gen 43:32), was disgusted at eating food given by the Hebrew Joseph. It may be that this is a figurative expression marking the lazy unconcern of the Egyptian Potiphar. The mention in verse 6 of Joseph’s beauty has immediate connection with the account of his misfortunes, which were a consequence of his attractive appearance.

Temptation from His Wife and Joseph’s Chastity, Slander and His Imprisonment in Prison

Genesis 39:7. And after these things, his master’s wife cast her eyes on Joseph and said, “Lie with me. The fact of the profound moral depravity of Potiphar’s wife is entirely confirmed by the testimony of ancient authors that Egypt was from ancient times considered a country of debauchery and widespread infidelity of wives to husbands; according to Herodotus (book 2, 111), in the time of the son of Sesostris, in all of Egypt one could not in vain seek a wife faithful to her husband. The account of chapter 39 has very close affinity with the Egyptian legend of “the Two Brothers” (Vigouroux).

Genesis 39:8–9. But he refused and said to his master’s wife, “Look, with me here, my master has no concern about anything in the house, and he has put everything that he has in my hand; he is not greater in this house than I am. He has withheld nothing from me except yourself, because you are his wife. How then could I do this great wrong and sin against God?” Joseph’s exhortations are distinguished by their completeness and thoroughness: he points to the following moments which should have brought the criminal wife to reason: • a sense of gratitude to Potiphar, which could not allow sinful relations with his wife; • a sense of honor and personal dignity (“he is not greater in this house than I am”); • a reminder to the woman of her marital obligations (“because you are his wife”); and finally • a sense of God’s omnipresence and fear of God, as well as the holiness of moral law (“How then could I do this great wrong and sin against God?”).

Genesis 39:10–12. And although she spoke to Joseph day after day, he would not consent to lie beside her or be with her. But one day, when he went into the house to do his work, and none of the men of the house was there in the house, she caught hold of his garment, saying, “Lie with me!” But he left his garment in her hand and fled and got himself out of the house. This temptation lasted many days for Joseph, and when his moral steadfastness remained inflexible (the Midrash understands the words of Jacob in exactly this sense, Gen 49:24, of Joseph: “his bow remained firm”), this shameful passion of the Egyptian woman grew to the utmost limits, all feminine shame in her disappeared, and she, like a true prostitute (Prov 7:13-21), attempts by force to incline Joseph to sin. Then Joseph flees, leaving his garment in the hands of the Egyptian woman, and as if not concerned that in this way he gives into the hands of a corrupt and vengeful woman material evidence of his supposed crime.

Genesis 39:13–15. And when she saw that he had left his garment in her hand and had fled out of the house, she called to the members of her household and said to them, “See, my husband brought a Hebrew to us to insult us! He came in to me to lie with me, and I cried out with a loud voice; when he heard me raise my voice and cry out, he left his garment beside me, and fled and got himself out of the house.” Rejected passionate love, according to a psychological law (cf. 2 Sam 13:15), especially in unrestrained natures, passes into hatred, and the Egyptian woman avenges herself on Joseph with slander against him first before her household (verses 13–15), then—before her husband (verses 16–18), with that cunning and treacherous, but effective calculation, that the first lie, following immediately after the alleged fact and set to acquire witnesses to its truth (in the persons of the household), will make the second lie more credible. She conducts her slander against Joseph with great cunning. She with utmost contempt calls him “a Hebrew” (cf. Gen 43:32), and in this way, hypocritically expressing her revulsion for Joseph and even trying to transmit this revulsion to her household (“to insult us,” verse 14), she attempts to completely destroy the opposite (of her rejected love) assumption of the people, though they were hardly particularly inclined toward the master’s favorite, Joseph. In testimony of the truth of her words, she points to two moments, factually true, but perverted in motivation and deliberately transposed one in the place of the other: 1) her cry and 2) the supposed voluntary leaving of his garment by Joseph (verse 15), whereas the latter occurred earlier and was a consequence of violence done to Joseph by the Egyptian woman, and her cry about help or protection was a forced simulation of offense already after this.

Genesis 39:17–18. And she told him the same story, saying, “The Hebrew servant, whom you have brought among us, came in to me to insult me; [and when I raised my voice and cried out, he left his garment with me and fled out of the house.] But when [he heard that] I raised my voice and cried out, he left his garment with me and fled out of the house.” The same cunning—to occupy instead of the position of the accused the role of accuser—is expressed by Potiphar’s wife in her appeal to her husband (about him she mentioned contemptuously even before, verse 14, in conversation with the household): to him she expresses her pretended anger and reproaches for the fact that he, incautiously introducing a “Hebrew slave” into the house, was himself the last, though indirect, cause of disgrace to her and her family.

Genesis 39:19. When his master heard the words that his wife spoke to him, saying, “This is what your servant did to me,” his anger was kindled. Potiphar “was kindled with anger”; against whom—against Joseph or against his wife, is not said. According to Jewish interpreters, Potiphar did not believe his wife’s accusation, because if he had believed it, he would have executed a man who dared to defile his bed; but he did not want to investigate the matter further, avoiding shame for himself and his family. That, however, his anger was at least at first directed at Joseph, not at his wife, is evident from the consequence of the described occurrence and the spread slander: he imprisons Joseph (verse 20), probably without even hearing the accused, about whose self-defense the text says nothing. “If,” says the holy John Chrysostom (Homily 62, p. 669) of Potiphar, “he did not believe, then it was not necessary to imprison him; and if he believed that the Egyptian woman’s words were true, then Joseph deserved not imprisonment in a dungeon, but death and the highest punishment... But the hand of the Almighty restrained the foreigner, and did not allow him to immediately rush into murdering the youth.”

God’s Mercy toward Joseph in Prison

Genesis 39:20–22. And Joseph’s master took him and put him into the prison, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined; he remained there in the prison. But the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love; he gave him favor in the sight of the chief jailer. And the chief jailer committed to Joseph’s care all the prisoners who were in the prison, and whatever was done there, he was the one who did it. The name of the prison—sohar, not found anywhere else in the Bible except in Joseph’s history (Gen 39:20-23), and used here with the explanatory note: the place “where the king’s prisoners were confined” (that is, criminals of state), Abenezra considered an Egyptian word, and Jablonsky brought this word closer to the Coptic soncharch—“guard of the bound.” But Gesenius finds it possible to see here a word of the same root as the Hebrew sachar, to fence, from which sohar (sochar)—a fortress, which best fits ὀχύρωμα in the LXX (Slavonic “stronghold”). The chief jailer (verses 21, 22, 23), who obtained Joseph’s favor, is distinguished from Potiphar, in whose house, probably, the prison was located and to whom the chief jailer was probably subordinate. Thus disappears the contradiction found by critics in the biblical account—in the very fact that Joseph had two masters and there were two commanders of the guard. Ps 104:17-18 mentions Joseph’s imprisonment in chains; but this was probably only at first after his confinement. Joseph was confined, perhaps at twenty-eight years of age, since after two years of confinement, upon his elevation to the position of first minister of Pharaoh, he was thirty years old (Gen 41:46).