Integrity Under Unequal Power

The verse picks up 37:36 almost word for word, closing the bracket around Judah and Tamar. “Brought down” is passive: Joseph does nothing in this sentence. Calling Potiphar “an Egyptian” when he is Pharaoh’s officer sounds redundant, and some have taken it as a hint that foreigners held power in Egypt then; that is an inference.

Chapter 39 uses the divine name, the LORD, eight times. Everywhere else in Joseph’s account, from chapter 37 to 50, it is “God”, with a single exception in 49:18. The word for prosperous is the one Abraham’s servant used when the LORD “prospered” his way to Rebekah (24:21).

An Egyptian sees that Israel’s God is with his slave. Abimelech the Philistine said the same of Isaac: “We saw certainly that the LORD was with thee” (26:28). How Potiphar put it in his own words, Genesis does not say.

Finding grace, chen, is what Noah did in 6:8. “Served him” is sheret, personal attendance, the word used when Joshua is Moses’ “minister” (Exodus 24:13). The verb for making him overseer, paqad, returns when Joseph tells Pharaoh to “appoint officers over the land” (41:34).

Laban said almost this in 30:27: “the LORD hath blessed me for thy sake.” Both men gained from a son of Jacob working in their houses. The blessing reaches “the house” and “the field”, the whole of an Egyptian estate.

“Goodly person, and well favoured” is exactly the double phrase used of his mother: Rachel was “beautiful and well favoured” (29:17). No other man in the Bible is described with it. “Save the bread which he did eat” may reflect Egyptian food rules (43:32); Rashi took the bread as a delicate way of naming Potiphar’s wife.

“After these things” is the phrase that opened the binding of Isaac, “after these things God did tempt Abraham” (22:1), and often signals a trial. “Cast her eyes” is literally “lifted up her eyes”. Her demand is two words in Hebrew, shikhvah immi.

In the synagogue chant “he refused” carries the shalshelet, a long wavering note that appears only four times in the whole Torah, including Lot’s lingering in 19:16. “Wotteth” is the old English for “knows”. Joseph’s first argument is about his master’s trust.

“None greater in this house than I” is the shape of Pharaoh’s words in 41:40: “only in the throne will I be greater than thou.” He speaks of “God”, Elohim, to an Egyptian, not of the LORD. He calls the act not only a wrong against Potiphar but a sin.

Esther 3:4 uses nearly the same words of Mordecai: “when they spake daily unto him, and he hearkened not unto them.” The Joseph chapters and Esther share more than one phrase, both being accounts of a Hebrew at a foreign court.

“About this time” is literally “on this day”, and Rashi reported a tradition that it was a festival day when the household had gone out. The Talmud also records a view that Joseph came in with the intention to yield and saw his father’s face (Sotah 36b); that is midrash, and Genesis says only that he came to work.

The word for garment here is beged, not the ketonet of the coat in chapter 37. Beged sounds like bagad, to deal treacherously, and commentators have noted the pun. He runs out of the house, where anyone might see him fleeing.

The verse repeats what has just happened from her side, “when she saw”. The pause is where she decides. “Fled forth” is literally “fled outside”: he was seen in the open, which makes her version possible.

“Hebrew”, ivri, is what outsiders call Abraham’s people, first used of Abram in 14:13. “To mock” is letsachek, from the root of Isaac’s name: it is the “mocking” of Ishmael in 21:9 and Isaac “sporting” with Rebekah in 26:8, so the word carries a sexual edge.

Her account reverses the order of events. In fact he left the garment and then she cried; she says he left it when he heard her cry. The garment is now “with me”, not “in her hand” as in verse 12, which would admit that she had seized it.

“By her” is etslah, the same word as in verse 10, where Joseph would not lie “by her”. The garment lies beside her where he refused to be. It waits there “until his lord came home”, and the Hebrew calls Potiphar Joseph’s lord, not hers.

“According to these words” means the same account again, adjusted for a new hearer. To the servants Joseph was “an Hebrew”; to her husband he is “the Hebrew servant”, a slave, and one Potiphar himself brought into the house.

The account ends where it must, with the garment as the only exhibit. No hearing follows. Joseph is not asked for his side, and he says nothing at all in the rest of the chapter.

“His wrath was kindled” is literally “his nose burned”, the Hebrew idiom for anger. She closes with “thy servant”, making the offence one against Potiphar’s own authority: the servant he trusted with everything.

The prison is beit hassohar, “the round house”, a term found only in the Joseph chapters. Psalm 105:18 remembers it harshly: “Whose feet they hurt with fetters: he was laid in iron.” For a slave accused of assaulting his master’s wife, prison rather than death is a mild sentence, but Genesis gives no reason for it.

“Shewed him mercy” is chesed, steadfast kindness, the loyalty of a covenant partner. It is the first time the word is used of God’s dealing with Joseph. “Favour” is chen again, the grace of verse 4, now found with a jailer.

The Hebrew is stronger than the KJV: whatever was done there, “he was the one doing it”. The prison is run by a prisoner. That places Joseph where he will meet Pharaoh’s own officers in the next chapter.

The keeper “looked not” at anything in Joseph’s charge, as Potiphar knew nothing beyond his bread (verse 6). The chapter closes on the LORD making Joseph prosper, and after this the divine name falls silent in the Joseph chapters until Jacob’s blessing of Dan (49:18).