Notes 54: Chez Potiphar (39:1-23)

SYNOPSIS: Meanwhile back in Egypt, Joseph is sold to the Pharaoh's employee, Potiphar, who quickly gains trust in him and puts him in charge of his own household. A good-looking young man, Joseph falls into a trap. Potiphar's wife lusts after him, and when Joseph loyally refuses her advances, she turns against him and through lies gets Joseph put into the prison on Potiphar's compound. But Joseph finds his way into the jailer's good books and gets put in charge of the other prisoners. Thus a pattern emerges, despite all the calamities that happen to him, God is on Joseph's side and he always comes out on top.

• Text of the passage (in Nawat)

Another saucy story! If this were Hollywood we would put it down to the usual ploy of making sure there are a couple of sex scenes to keep audiences happy. And to be honest, I don't think we can say with any certainty that it didn't work that way with early audiences of Genesis: who's to say? (Though of course later generations of straight-laced bible teachers would never admit that.) Is it just a coincidence that after the Tamar story, when Genesis resumes the telling of Joseph's story, near the beginning of "Act II" there is yet another "bed scene"? Or was it a calculated crowd pleaser? None of the above?

The business between Potiphar's wife and Joseph is positioned in the centre of the present passage (consisting of the twenty-three verses of ch. 39) and takes up most of the chapter, basically verses 7-18. This anecdote is preceded by six introductory verses (1-6) and followed by another five (19-23), and extends for twelve verses which is just over half the chapter. In other words, the "story of Potiphar's wife" is the centrepiece of the chapter and the passage in narrative terms. In comparison with the majority of narrative segments in Genesis, this may be considered fairly drawn out and detailed, as if the audience is being invited to imagine the scene and dwell on its images: the wife trying to seduce Joseph, Joseph's very correct attempts at tactful refusal in what must have been a tremendously delicate situation and his attempt to explain his reasons diplomatically, her continued insistence and their physical confrontation, the wife's fury at having her advances spurned, her angry, obstinate behaviour, Joseph's anxious eagerness to get away and the wife's final move to obtain revenge by falsely accusing Joseph of attempted rape: a dozen verses tell all that.

But it is what comes before (vv. 1-6) and after (vv. 19-23) the scene that frame it narratively and thematically: narratively, in that those verses place the anecdote in the context of the continuing vicissitudes of Joseph's career, and thematically by pointing out that, in spite of the downs that keep alternating with the ups, God is always on his side and repeatedly makes sure that, come what may, Joseph is invincible and will always come out on top, and this is something that the rest of his story will go much further to demonstrate. So this is the essential drift of the main story: Joseph is sold into slavery in Egypt by his brothers' treachery but, though God's help and his own ability, he ends up in a very good position on the house of one of the king's officials, Potiphar; despite it all, Potiphar's wife turns on him and through another display of treachery he ends up out of grace with his master and in prison, and yet, lo and behold, once more his fortune begins to improve and he is given another position of trust, respect and responsibility even though he is still in prison for something he didn't do: and with the passage concluding there, we will have to wait and see what is going to happen next, but we can already expect, having got this far, that it will be something special. And if that is all too dry and edifying for some of the audience, there is always the entertainment provided by the fun and games that go on in madam's bedroom. Who needs Hollywood script writers?

By now we will not be surprised to find that, according to modern bible scholars, the story of Potiphar's wife no doubt started life as a separate tale, which the authors of Genesis managed to integrate very satisfactorily into the Joseph story-line. In its earlier version, the story might not have been told about Potiphar, and if we look closely, we shall see that the only place in this chapter where he is referred to by name in in the first verse, while there is only one other place in Genesis where the name occurs, and that was in the last verse of the passage preceding the Tamar story (37:36). In the body of the story, Joseph's master is always referred to just that: adonaw 'his master.'

The way Potiphar is brought back into the story here is by appending to his name the explanation (JPS) s'ris par‛o sar haTTabbaxim ish mitzri 'a certain Egyptian... a courtier of Pharaoh and his chief steward', which is a repetition of information we already knew because in the first occurrence he was also described as s'ris par‛o sar haTTabbaxim 'a courtier of Pharaoh and his chief steward.' Now of course we are free to make what we like of the repetition. It may just be there in order to jog the audience's memory, in case we have forgotten who Potiphar is (and where we were in the story) given that Potiphar was only mentioned the one time right at the end of the passage prior to the jump to Judah and Tamar. Or perhaps, as suggested in EH, it is to draw our attention to points worth emphasising because they are central to the story that is about to unfold: we need to understand that Joseph's master is an Egyptian and that he is an important person who is close to Pharaoh. Alternatively, we might want to go with CB (p. 347) and EAS (p. 304) which both express the opinion that the naming and description of Potiphar at the start of the present passage are "an insertion of the editor" into a story which otherwise would have continued to stand as an autonomous narrative, serving precisely to link them together as part of the same saga.


39:1 poTifar
Potiphar is an authentic Egyptian name (EAS).

39:2 wayhi YHWH et yosef
'The Lord was with Joseph.' This phrase occurs again in v. 21, underlining its fundamental theme; and see also v. 3. As people in some cultures phrase it: Things happen for a reason (Por algo suceden las cosas).

wayhi b'vet adonaw hammitzri
'He stayed in the house of his Egyptian master.' As a bought slave, Joseph might have been sent to work in the fields. That he remained to work in his master's house was the first stroke of good luck.

39:3 wayyar adonaw ki YHWH itto w'khol asher hu ‛ose YHWH matzlíax b'yado
'His master saw that the Lord was with him [i.e. Joseph] and and [in] whatever he did the Lord made him successful'. Apparently Joseph was good at everything he did, but the merit is attributed in the text to God who is "with him."

39:6 wayya‛azov kol asher lo b'yad yosef w'lo yada‛ itto m'uma ki im halléxem asher hu okhel
JPS: 'He left all that he had in Joseph's hands and, with him there, he paid attention to nothing save the food that he ate.' Some complicated alternative ways of understanding this have been suggested (both CB and EAS refer to a possible connection between the mention of "the food that he ate" and Egyptian dietary laws), but I don't see much need for it: it probably means what it looks like it does, namely that all Potiphar had to do was come to the table and eat (if they had tables), because Joseph was in charge of the rest.

39:7 wattomer shikhva ‛immi
'She said: Lie with me.' The EH commentary notes the apparent abruptness: "There are no preliminaries, no words of love. Her demand reflects her awareness of Joseph's slave status." I am not sure this is warranted. To begin with, at the best of times Genesis tends to be terse and to the point. Secondly, remember that there is no indirect speech in BH, so this would be the normal, indeed pretty much the only way to say what in English can be said like this: She told him to sleep with her. Thirdly, the verb form used is not the simple imperative, which would have been sh'khav, but the extended form shikhva which might, if translated as direct speech in English, be rendered as: Come sleep with me! rather than a raw: Sleep with me.

39:8-9
Joseph's little speech to Potiphar's wife in which he gives his reasons for declining her invitation consists of three sentences: hen adoni lo yada‛ etc. (I have the responsibility of looking after my master's household), enénnu gadol babbáyit hazze mimménni... (you are the only thing in this house I do not have a right to) and w'ekh e‛ese... w'xaTáti lelohim (how could I sin to God so?). Or as EH puts it: "First he points to the abuse of trust that would be involved, then to the violation of the husband's proprietary rights over his wife, then to the religious and moral nature of the offense."

39:12 wayyános wayyetze haxútza
Lit. 'he fled and he went outside.' Acc. to EH, this refers to two acts in sequence: first he makes a dash to get away, and then he walks out in a dignified manner so as not to attract attention. I really doubt it: my guess is that both verbs refer to the same action and are well translated as something like 'he fled outside' in English or salió corriendo or salió huyendo in Spanish. The same formula is used in v. 15, where from the context it is even more obvious what it must mean.

39:14 ‛ivri
On the overtones of this term, see my comments on ch. 14. 


39:20 wayyiqqax... wayyitt'néhu
Lit. '(Joseph's master) took (him) and put him (in the prison).' Inconsistently, the same commentators of EH who insist (see note on v. 12) that wayyános wayyetze describes a sequence of two discreet actions have no objection to translating wayyiqqax wayyitt'néhu, a similar chain of two verbs, as a single action: 'So Joseph's master had him put in prison.'