The God Who Shows; or, Rags to Riches

When we left him last Sunday, Joseph had been convicted and sentenced on the basis of a false accusation from his master's wife. He's been consigned to a prison facility which, given Potiphar's likely role in executions, is naturally below ground on his very estate (Genesis 39:20; 40:7).¹ At first Joseph's “feet were hurt with fetters, his neck was put in a collar of iron” (Psalm 105:18), yet “he endured all this in being tested like gold.”² There in prison, God's grace so aided him that his warden trusted him with administrative power (Genesis 39:21-23).

An uncertain length of time goes by – could be months, could be years – until, one day, two more prisoners join the party. It's a pair of palace officials, the royal cupbearer and the royal baker; together, these two take the lead in provision of royal food and drink, on which the king's life – despite his pretensions to be a god – depends.³ Those who serve in a sensitive role like chief cupbearer might be one of the pharaoh's closest friends since before he took the throne.⁴ Yet somehow, the pair of them had “sinned against their lord, the king of Egypt” (Genesis 40:1) – how exactly, we're never told, but as a result of Pharaoh's anger, he had them placed “under guard in the house of the chief of the butchers” (Genesis 40:2-3). And that's Potiphar. So he appointed Joseph to pay special attention to these two. Obedient still to Potiphar, Joseph “ministered to them” (Genesis 40:4), the same way he was “made overseer” of Potiphar's house and “ministered to him” as a personal attendant (Genesis 39:4). Why might Potiphar want Joseph to get close to the two fallen officials? Either as a spy to get intelligence to solve their case,⁵ or as a way of buttering them up in case they're restored to favor.⁶

Some amount of time passes, maybe a year; “they continued days under guard,” until one night “they dreamed a dream, the two of them, each man his dream in one night, each man according to the interpretation of his dream, the cupbearer and the baker who belonged to the king of Egypt, who were bound in the round house” (Genesis 40:4-5). It's a wordy, awkward sentence, hinting at a big question. Clearly, these two are a pair – all that's been done to or by them has been attributed to them together – and now they've “dreamed a dream,” it says, not dreams – but “each man his dream.” So which is it? One dream, or two?⁷ Whichever the case, they or it has meaning. To ancient Egyptians, known for their “confidence in the ominous value of dreams,” dreams “open up perspectives on another world.”⁸ But these men can't decipher the omen they're sure is there.

In the morning, as 28-year-old Joseph makes his regular check-in, “he saw them, and beholds” – weird choice of words – “beholds, they were vexed” (Genesis 40:6), “troubled and confounded and despairing.”⁹ It's all over their expressions. So he asks them what the matter is: “Why are your faces evils today?” (Genesis 40:7). The same Joseph who used to thrust his dreams unwanted in his brothers' faces has grown inquisitive and sensitive to others' feelings,¹⁰ and is “concerned to relieve the sadness of others.”¹¹ In unison they answer, “We have dreamed a dream, and there is no interpreter of it” (Genesis 40:8). Having already conferred, they're convinced the dream is a shared experience,¹² but, severed from court by this prison, they'll never know the meaning.

Joseph doesn't buy that. “Don't interpretations belong to God?” That's a new way of looking at it for them. In Egypt, dreams were “fixed signs which portend good or bad events” without a god needing to be involved; that's why humans skilled in consulting the right manuals could deduce the right connection and assign a clear 'good' or 'bad' rating to what was coming.¹³ Joseph urges them to “please recount to me” what they've dreamed – a pretty bold transition, from God's ability to Joseph's ear!¹⁴ But remember, Joseph's now on the other side of his temptation-in-Eden crucible. In the garden, the man and woman stole divine knowledge; Joseph hopes, and rightly, that God will grace him with a taste thereof freely offered, for the sake of others and not for self.¹⁵

One's got to go first, and that's “the chief of the cupbearers,” who “recounted his dream to Joseph” (Genesis 40:9). The vivid dream starts normally enough, with him standing facing a grapevine with three – count 'em, one, two, three – branches. But then, as if he's watching a time lapse video, the vine buds and then blossoms and then the grape clusters ripen on each branch – three phases (Genesis 40:10). At this point, the cupbearer realizes he's holding Pharaoh's cup, the implement of his former service at court. Actively reaching out to the vine, he takes hold and squeezes the clusters, letting grape juice run into Pharaoh's cup; then, as it ferments on fast-forward, he takes it and delivers it up to Pharaoh: mission accomplished (Genesis 40:11).

But why? Joseph – who just suggested interpreting dreams is a divine gift – will tell him. The number of the branches stands out, so that hieroglyphic-static image must mean units of time, especially since they all know there's a holiday three days away.¹⁶ So what's in store in three days? Joseph might notice that the cupbearer said the words 'cup' and 'Pharaoh' three times each.¹⁷ For that matter, the cupbearer saw 'blossoms,' and Joseph knows that in Hebrew the same word means 'falcons,' like the falcon-headed god Horus whom Pharaoh was believed to manifest. Joseph sees that the speedy production of wine and its safe service to Pharaoh bode well: it means the cupbearer will get back to work, requiring that his head be lifted graciously in Pharaoh's presence and that he be reinstated in office as chief of the cupbearers (Genesis 40:12-13).

Now the deposed chief of bakers, having been more reluctant to share, “saw that the interpretation was good” – whether he thinks reliable, or just favorable (Genesis 40:16). And since they've been assuming their dreams are a shared dream with a shared meaning, he suddenly feels relieved and confident, “expecting a prediction similar to that made” to his colleague.¹⁸ Now “also I, in my dream – and behold, there were three baskets of cakes upon my head, and in the basket most high were from all foods of Pharaoh, from bakery products, and the bird ate it from the basket from upon my head” (Genesis 40:16-17). The baker hopes the bird represents Horus, and so Pharaoh has come and received his offering with pleasure.¹⁹

Here again, “Joseph received an interpretation of it from heavenly revelation,” consciously or not.²⁰ Joseph sure starts out the same way: “This is the interpretation: the three baskets,” like the other man's three branches, “are three days.” What that portends is that “in three days, Pharaoh will lift your head” – word-for-word what he just told the cupbearer (Genesis 40:18-19). So we wait with bated breath for Joseph to continue with the phrase 'and restore you to your office' again.²¹ But Joseph yanks the wheel hard to the left. Now he's off-roading. Yes, Pharaoh will lift your head – “from off of you!” And then “he will hang you on a tree, and the bird” – no falcon of Horus, but a hateful vulture – “will eat your flesh from off of you” (Genesis 40:19). That's terrible!

How'd Joseph get here? The baker dreamt of himself as a totally passive figure. Where the cupbearer squeezed grapes into wine, we never saw the baker baking any of the dainties in his baskets.²² Where the chief cupbearer dreamt at a fast pace, the baker's dream is stagnant as a tomb.²³ Where the cupbearer delivered the cup to the king, the baker's own dream never gets him handing over the baked goods to Pharaoh.²⁴ Seemingly motionless and apathetic, he fails to defend them from scavenging birds. In Hebrew, 'baker' and 'bird' sound alike, and real birds will dine on the baker's very substance, his very own flesh after it's impaled, hung up on a stake.²⁵ And that's the most horrible fate the baker could fear, because in Egyptian belief, the ba soul had to be able to revisit the body at night to remember who it was; if he's bird food, he's condemned to lose himself eternally.²⁶

It's a hard lesson in how omens of grace and wrath, salvation and damnation, can sound “chillingly close.”²⁷ I'm guessing the rest of that day and the next were awkward in the prison, now that everyone knows their own and the other's fate – assuming, of course, that this 28-year-old Hebrew prison slave has credibility to do what even trained experts accomplish only with arduous study. But then came the third day, Pharaoh's Birthday – not the anniversary of when his mama bore him, but a celebration of his rise to the throne, understood as his divine rebirth as the Horus on earth.²⁸ To mark the occasion, Pharaoh “made a feast for all his servants,” and called up this pair of officers from prison, lifting both their heads; but, exactly as Joseph predicted, the cupbearer was “returned to his cupbearership, and he gave the cup into Pharaoh's hand,” while Pharaoh “hanged the chief of the bakers” (Genesis 40:20-22). “With the spirit of wisdom, [Joseph had] interpreted the truth of the dreams he had heard and revealed the course of future events,” which now have come to pass.²⁹

A dream interpreter customarily got paid, or at least tipped, for his services,³⁰ so Joseph had no compunctions about asking the cupbearer, “when it is good with you,” to remember Joseph, have mercy on Joseph, remember Joseph to Pharaoh. With salvation and destruction so alike, Joseph's nervously wondering what his own future might have in store.³¹ He pleads that he's been a victim of human trafficking, “utterly stolen out of the land of the Hebrews,” and is an innocent undeservedly behind bars, having done nothing to merit this confinement in “the pit” (Genesis 40:14-15). He admits no fault, however partial, in the chain of events that led here.³² And it could be that Joseph here “forsook the favor that is from above... and trusted... in flesh that passes, in flesh that tastes the cup of death,” for his redemption.³³ For all Joseph's pleading, “the chief of the cupbearers did not remember Joseph, but forgot him” (Genesis 40:23), “forgot about his benefactor and the prayers of the just one.”³⁴ And so, disappointed and chastened, Joseph “remained in prison, a forgotten man,” two more years.³⁵

But at the end of “two years of days,” we meet a third dreamer – and this time, he's got a real spiffy hat. “Pharaoh dreamed, and behold, he was standing by the Nile; and behold, out of the Nile arose seven cows, fair of appearance and fat of flesh, and they grazed among the reeds” (Genesis 41:1-2). Cattle were crucial to the Egyptian economy,³⁶ but there's a little joke: the Hebrew spelling of 'pharaoh' is just one extra letter stuffed into their word for 'cow.'³⁷ Pharaoh, thinking in Egyptian, wouldn't get it. Then, “behold, seven cows more arose after them out from the Nile, awful of appearance and lean of flesh; and they took their stand by the cows on the lip of the Nile. And the cows awful of appearance and lean of flesh devoured the seven cows fair of appearance and fat – and Pharaoh awoke” (Genesis 41:3-4). Of course, to Pharaoh, dreaming was awakening, becoming watchful at the borders of the next world.³⁸ So Pharaoh fell back asleep, “and he dreamed a second time: and behold, seven grain-ears,” spikes of emmer wheat, “arose on one stalk, fat and good; and behold, seven grain-ears lean and scorched from the east wind sprang up after them. And the lean grain-ears swallowed down the seven grain-ears fat and full – and Pharaoh awoke, and behold, it was a dream” (Genesis 41:5-7).

Understandably, “in the morning, his spirit was disturbed.” Ancient Egyptians were deeply worried that dreaming could put them within range of dark spirits and the neglected dead, which is why Egyptians engraved their headrests with magic spells to ward them off, and also recited charms after waking up from nightmares.³⁹ So the king “sent and called for all the magicians of Egypt and all its wise men, and Pharaoh recounted to them his dream” (Genesis 41:8). The word for 'magicians' is an Egyptian word, meaning the lector-priests and experts who worked in the 'House of Life,' a temple scriptorium where various disciplines of magic and religion were studied, including dream interpretation.⁴⁰ This scene reminds us of another, set centuries later, where a Babylonian king “dreamed dreams; his spirit was disturbed, and his sleep left him; and the king said to call to the magicians, the enchanters, the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans to tell the king his dreams” (Daniel 2:1-2).

But in this august assembly in Egypt, “there was none interpreting them to Pharaoh” (Genesis 41:8). Royal dreams were supposed to be clear messages straight from a god's mouth, promising rule or victory or charging the king to look after a certain temple – and this was obviously none of those.⁴¹ These cows and grains were no page of the manual. So these experts' best guesses prove simplistic, reductive, flat.⁴² They're all “completely without the knowledge required to be able to explain what was revealed,”⁴³ certainly not in a way that satisfies Pharaoh's own instincts of what the dream ought to mean.⁴⁴

Amidst this frustration, a switch flips in the brain of the chief cupbearer. Suddenly he tells Pharaoh, “My sins I remember today!” – plural, covering both his earlier offense against Pharaoh and also the added offense of failing to remember Joseph in gratitude. Now he recalls Joseph “not out of gratitude but out of calculation.”⁴⁵ He rehearses the highlights of the “Hebrew lad, a slave of the chief of the butchers,” interpreting the two officials' linked pair of dreams (Genesis 41:9-13). That's just the man Pharaoh needs right now, a reader of dreams in pairs.⁴⁶ And now we can see why God, in his wisdom, “allowed forgetfulness to affect the chief cupbearer” until just this moment, “the right moment for release.”⁴⁷

With that, Pharaoh gives the order, and his servants go hustle Joseph out of the pit, hastily bringing him back to the light, his first glimpse of the outside world in at least three years. He's in no position to enter the presence of Pharaoh, reeking of prison filth. In Egyptian belief, the pharaoh was a living god on earth; their sages called on people to “worship the king..., the begetter who creates the subjects..., for the one who worships him will be one whom his arm shelters.”⁴⁸ So he changes from his dirty prison clothes into something presentable that they offer him, and he allows them to shave his face and head. Where most in the Middle East grew beards, the Egyptians were opposite, preferring to be clean-shaven all over – and Joseph here accepts their Egyptian custom and ditches his hair as both prisoner and Hebrew.⁴⁹ Only then “he came in before Pharaoh” (Genesis 41:14).

Pharaoh explains – and here we catch his irritation with his lector-priests and experts – that “a dream I have dreamed, and there is none who interprets it” (Genesis 41:15), where when they tried their hand at his dream, “there was none interpreting them” (Genesis 41:8) – he, consciously or not, requires it to all fit together as one thing, but they kept viewing the scenes as separate. But, the king's been told about Joseph, “you hear a dream to interpret it” (Genesis 41:15). Amazingly, Joseph dares to correct Pharaoh. “Apart from me!” he says. Don't go thinking, Pharaoh, that Joseph's just so smart. Give credit where credit's really due: “God will answer the peace of Pharaoh” (Genesis 41:16), much as Daniel assured the king that “no wise men... can show to the king the mysteries that the king has asked, but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries” (Daniel 2:27-28). In this case, too, “God alone has it in his power to bring it to light,” Joseph insists.⁵⁰ Pharaoh's not offended; he can respect what Joseph's saying. Ancient Egyptians “had an intensely personal relationship with their gods.”⁵¹

So Pharaoh narrates his dream all over again; Genesis is daring us to play spot-the-difference. Notice that, where the narrator said the first seven cows were “fair of appearance and fat of flesh” (Genesis 41:2), Pharaoh switches it to “fat of flesh and fair of form” (Genesis 41:18). But he's especially obsessed with the second set of cows, calling them “poor and most awful of form and lean of flesh,” adding that “never have I seen such as these in all the land of Egypt for badness” (Genesis 41:19). He's disgusted, leaping straight to the scene of carnage; as he describes it, the original cows are described purely in terms of their fatness – making Pharaoh all the more surprised that “when they had entered into their innards, no one would've known that they'd entered into their innards, for their appearance was awful, just as from the beginning” (Genesis 41:21). His focus is on the terrifying ugliness of the seven cannibal cows and how the immense fatness of their bovine prey is powerless to nourish them. He doesn't treat the next scene as a second dream, but as though, falling asleep, he just picked up where he left off.⁵² Here he sticks closer to the original, but drops all references to wheat as 'fat,' instead calling the first seven ears “full and good” and then just “good” (Genesis 41:22, 24), while expanding the negative description of the second seven by adding “withered” (Genesis 41:23). Pharaoh closes his rendition, not with his troubled spirit, but with his dissatisfaction with his lector-priests and experts. Listen to Pharaoh closely, and he's deeply unsettled by images of “apparent power swallowed up by impotence,” and he fears that whatever this dream portends, it's a threat that his own reign and dynasty be swallowed up by failure.⁵³

At this point in Daniel's story, he'd retreat to his house to pray until the secret was shown to him in a vision by night (Daniel 2:17-19). We don't hear Joseph praying here; he gets right to work, for God “gave him favor and wisdom before Pharaoh, king of Egypt” (Acts 7:10). God already “arranged for Joseph to judge the dreams” of Pharaoh,⁵⁴ and to “penetrate right into the innermost depths of the chamber of truth.”⁵⁵ Joseph can recognize that, with Pharaoh starting out on the bank of the Nile, which is Egypt's literal lifeline, that this dreamscape is of clear significance for the whole land and Pharaoh's reign over it.⁵⁶ He opens his answer by stating his starting principles. First, “the dream of Pharaoh, it is one,” “not two separate dreams, but a single vision.”⁵⁷ Where cupbearer and baker had similar dreams with different meanings, Pharaoh's divergent scenes are a single dream with a common meaning, just as Pharaoh clearly felt in his bones.⁵⁸ Second, this dream is a divine message about the imminent future, a means for “the God” to loop Pharaoh in on his plans (Genesis 41:25), much as, in Daniel's story, God “made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days” (Daniel 2:27). For “the Spirit's instruction” can occur “by dreams, as has happened not only with many saints but also with Pharaoh and King Nebuchadnezzar, who saw what neither of them was capable of understanding.”⁵⁹

Applying these principles, Joseph says the original “seven good cows” and “seven good grain-ears” must point to the same reality; and, applying his third principle that countable things are units of time, Joseph reasons that they mean seven good years. So “the seven lean and bad cows” and “the seven empty grain-ears scorched by the east wind” are a following set of seven lean, bad, empty years. Joseph repeats again his two lead principles: “the dream, it is one,” and “it is the word which I have spoken to Pharaoh: what the God is about to do, he has shown to Pharaoh” (Genesis 41:26-28). With that unpacked, Joseph can lay out the meaning plainly: first, “seven years will come of great plenty in all the land of Egypt” – that's great news! But “there will arise seven years of famine after them,” seven years where the Nile won't flood enough to irrigate the farmland – that's not so great. The famine will be so severe that what's left from the seven plenteous years won't satisfy, as Pharaoh saw with the cows (Genesis 41:29-31). The detail Joseph's saved for last is why Pharaoh's dream looked like two dreams. Says Joseph, “The basis for repeating the dream to Pharaoh another time is because the thing is fixed by the God, and the God will hasten to do it” (Genesis 41:32). “Joseph who understood... was more of a prophet than Pharaoh who saw,”⁶⁰ and “easily disclosed the things which were not apprehended by others,”⁶¹ in the process showing up the lector-priests of Egypt in the Bible's first clash of truth versus pagan magic.⁶²

The message, though, is hard news, the kind none of the courtiers would've wanted to give Pharaoh even if they could've apprehended it – we've seen what Pharaoh's anger is like. So Joseph dares to offer unsolicited advice, because if you're going to give the king a dark prophecy, you'd best serve it with a side dish of bright ideas! If there's one thing Joseph knows all too well, it's that life is full of rising floods and crashing dry spells, seasons of plenty and seasons of the pit.⁶³ He lives now by the conviction that “even divinely inspired dreams are meant to open doors, not close them.”⁶⁴ So he lays out for Pharaoh, before anyone can stop him, “operational advice on how to mobilize the Egyptian state to deal with this impending crisis.”⁶⁵ Respectful as Joseph is, by palace standards he speaks bluntly.⁶⁶ But with his insight into Pharaoh's concern, he knows reassurance that Pharaoh can survive and even thrive this time, this season, is just the spoonful of sugar to make this medicine go down.⁶⁷

There's suspense over how Joseph's dream interpretation and pragmatic advice will go over, but no one argues with either. “The word was good in the eyes of Pharaoh and in the eyes of all his servants” (Genesis 41:37), relieved there are answers and solutions alike.⁶⁸ Pharaoh turns to his court and challenges them to say where else they could “find such as this, a man in whom is the spirit of God” (Genesis 41:38), much as Daniel's king would declare that “the spirit of the holy gods is in you and that no mystery is too difficult for you” (Daniel 4:9). Pharaoh congratulates Joseph for being receptive to revelation, that “God has shown you all this” (Genesis 41:39) – he believes the proverbs of Ptahhotep, that “the mind of those the god gives is great.”⁶⁹

But on this basis, Pharaoh makes a stunning announcement: for the role Joseph has proposed, Joseph is the man – “after God has shown you all this, there is none so discerning and wise as you are.” Therefore, “you shall be over my house, and according to your mouth shall all my people sit;⁷⁰ only as regards the throne will I be greater than you” (Genesis 41:39-40). Once again, a position is outlined for Joseph where he has full authority to steward a master's resources, with a single defined limit. He's seemingly stunned speechless. As if to break through the mind-blown Hebrew before him, Pharaoh says it a second way: “See, I have given you to be over all the land of Egypt” (Genesis 41:41), “administrator of the entire land,”⁷¹ as Nebuchadnezzar “gave Daniel high honors and many great gifts, and made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon” (Daniel 2:48).

Speaking of honors and gifts, Pharaoh makes his words tangible with a series of gestures, combining investiture in office with a reward ceremony.⁷² He puts his own signet ring, which he'd been wearing, onto Joseph's finger, making him one of the royal sealbearers; he invests Joseph in garments of finest-quality linen, the same kind later used for Israel's tabernacle and priestly vestments; he hangs a gold chain around Joseph's neck, the Gold of Honor that could be awarded only at the personal initiative of the king (Genesis 41:42).⁷³ Not only that, but Pharaoh has Joseph ride in a two-person chariot through the neighborhood, as heralds cry out for people to snap to attention (Genesis 41:43),⁷⁴ a chariot ride home being the last part of the rewarding sequence.⁷⁵

But if Joseph needs anything more to make it feel real, we now hear Pharaoh's third word: “I am Pharaoh!” he declares from his throne, “and apart from you” – using the same word Joseph used when crediting God for the interpretation of dreams – “no man shall lift up hand and foot in all the land of Egypt” (Genesis 41:44). Joseph has hereby shot “from the bottom to the top of Egyptian society,”⁷⁶ “entrusted... with authority of the second rank among the Egyptians.”⁷⁷ Pharaoh “made him lord of his house and ruler of all his possessions, to bind his princes at his pleasure and to teach his elders wisdom” (Psalm 105:21-22). Can't you just hear Joseph's praise here? “I was alone, and God came to help me....; I was in bonds, and he loosed me...; a slave, and he exalted me.”⁷⁸ This is “a dramatic reversal, the greatest of his life,”⁷⁹ “risen from rags to riches.”⁸⁰ God “brought him the scepter of royalty and authority over his oppressors... and gave him eternal glory” (Wisdom 10:14).

Again Pharaoh follows his declaration with action, conferring on Joseph a new Egyptian name, as was common practice for Asiatics being assimilated into Egypt.⁸¹ The Bible records that “Pharaoh called the name of Joseph Zaphenath-paneah” (Genesis 41:45). Ancient readers guessed it meant 'Discoverer of Secrets,'⁸² or 'Diviner of Secrets,'⁸³ or 'Explainer of Mysteries.'⁸⁴ Modern suggestions have included 'God Speaks and He Lives,'⁸⁵ 'Sustainer of Life,'⁸⁶ 'My Provision is God the Living One,'⁸⁷ or that the full phrase was actually 'Joseph who is called Pi-ankh,' where Pi-ankh is an Egyptian name meaning 'One Who Recognizes Life.'⁸⁸ With all these tries at reconstructing the Egyptian name they were trying to write, we're pretty sure these days it's about life!

But Joseph doesn't just get a new Egyptian name; he gets a new Egyptian wife. Pharaoh “gave him Aseneth, the daughter of Potiphera priest of On, as a wife; and Joseph went out over the land of Egypt” (Genesis 41:45). This is a big deal. Potiphera is high priest at Iunu, which later Greeks called 'Heliopolis' or 'Sun City,' today in suburban Cairo. Iunu was the main center for worshipping the Egyptian sun-god Re, “the primeval one, lord of eternity, great to the far end of time,”⁸⁹ “lord of grain..., creator and maker of all that exists..., lord of truth, father of the gods, who made mankind..., who created the tree of life.”⁹⁰ Tending to Re's sacred bull Menwer and ministering at the site Egyptian tradition held to be the spot the world was created,⁹¹ Potiphera would've been an incredibly revered figure; his title at Iunu was 'Greatest of Seers.'⁹² This match is a “most distinguished marriage,”⁹³ which integrates Joseph powerfully into “the elite of Egyptian nobility.”⁹⁴

At the same time, it makes Joseph the son-in-law of a pagan priest. That's... awkward. Some Jews just changed Potiphera's job to a civic role – it'd be much less embarrassing that way.⁹⁵ Others invented a story that Aseneth was adopted, and was in fact Joseph's niece, a daughter Dinah conceived when assaulted by Shechem, and who had been sent off to Egypt and taken in by Potiphera.⁹⁶ But others wove a touching romance about the beautiful but reclusive Asenath's conversion, how after he prays for her to be purified from idolatry, she “repented of her gods whom she used to worship” and was then visited by an angel who shared a honeycomb from Eden with her and declared she'd “eaten bread of life and drunk a cup of immortality”; only then did Joseph marry her.⁹⁷

While “the land brought forth in the seven years of plenty unto fistfuls..., like the sand of the sea, very much, so that he ceased to count it, for it couldn't be counted” (Genesis 41:46-49) – language we're more used to hearing applied to the seed of Abraham (Genesis 32:12) – and, we hope, Joseph “ruled all the people of the land uprightly, and the land of Egypt was at peace before the Pharaoh,”⁹⁸ Joseph and Asenath began to build their family, having two sons. His firstborn is baby Manasseh, which means 'Forgetting,' because “God has made me forget all my hardship,” and the second is Ephraim, which means 'Fruitfulness,' because “God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction” (Genesis 41:50-52). Joseph thanks God for his change of fortune, that where he once suffered and was afflicted, now he's moved beyond that and entered a prosperous season.

Except... Joseph says, “God made me forget all my hardship and all my father's house” (Genesis 41:51). We're shocked – but then again, Joseph's now spent more of his life in Egypt than outside it. He's finally in a position where he could send messengers into Canaan to track down his family – but he has no interest in doing that. He only wants to “forget about his family with its painful past” of hatred and betrayal.⁹⁹ Joseph is Egyptian now.¹⁰⁰ And this balance of crediting God, on the one hand, but then disowning his Abrahamic family for a pagan land, on the other, forces us “to confront the ambiguity of Joseph's success.”¹⁰¹ Is he going to turn out to be “the hero of the wrong story”?¹⁰² Or does hope linger in the fact that he gives his half-Egyptian sons Hebrew names?¹⁰³ The chapter winds down once the famine begins, as “all the earth came to Egypt to buy grain, to Joseph,” but we wonder what the cost will be, and how God will work in this (Genesis 41:57).

When Daniel had gained the meaning of a royal dream sent by God, he then blessed the name of the God who “changes times and seasons; he removes kings and sets up kings; he gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who know understanding; he reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what's in the darkness, and the light dwells with him. To you, O God of my fathers, I give thanks and praise, for you have given me wisdom and might, and have now made known to me what we asked of you” (Daniel 2:20-23). Later, his words were echoed by someone much greater and wiser, who prayed, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding, and have revealed them to little children” (Luke 10:21). That was Jesus Christ, “the True Hebrew, the Interpreter not of a dream but of reality.”¹⁰⁴

Joseph, when the right moment of release came, was hastened up out of the pit to shave and change his clothes; and when the appointed hour came on Easter morning, so Christ hastened up out of the pit of death, out of the pit of the underworld, and clothed himself anew in a risen body.¹⁰⁵ Interpreting all things to his disciples over forty days, he then declared he'd been invested with “all authority in heaven and on earth” (Matthew 28:18), a vastly greater domain than Joseph had under Pharaoh. And then in practice, as the apostles went forth on Jesus' authority, Christ “obtained dominion over the whole world through the knowledge of faith.”¹⁰⁶

For we, too, had been imprisoned like Joseph – “held captive under the Law [or the elements of the world], imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed” (Galatians 3:23; 2:20). St. Paul speaks of “the mystery that was kept secret for long ages” (Romans 16:25), “hidden for ages and generations” (Colossians 1:26), “the mystery of Christ which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations,” not even Joseph's (Ephesians 3:4-5). But this, he says while “a prisoner of Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 3:1), “God has revealed to us through the Spirit” (1 Corinthians 2:10), “now revealed to his saints” (Colossians 1:26), “disclosed and... made known to all nations” (Romans 16:26), for the apostles “impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory” (1 Corinthians 2:7). Here's the mystery of Christ and the Church (Ephesians 5:32), displayed in advance in the marriage of Joseph to his Asenath from the nations.¹⁰⁷

Like the chief baker, Christ was “killed by hanging him on a tree” (Acts 5:30), so that he could give his flesh, not to the birds of the air, but to be “the bread that I will give for the life of the world” (John 6:51). Like the clusters of grapes, Christ allowed himself to be pressed, pouring out his blood as wine into the cup of salvation, which he rose again, restored from the pit, to administer. Teaching his revelations and his mysteries, “the Lord Jesus, taking pity on the hungers of the world, opened his granaries and disclosed the hidden treasures of the heavenly mysteries..., and sold..., asking not monetary payments but the price of faith and the recompense of devotion.”¹⁰⁸ In years of famine, we can always approach Christ to be fed the bread of life and the saving cup of immortality, to be anointed with the oil of incorruptibility sweeter and more fragrant than Eden's honey. In him do better dreams make their meanings known; in him do brighter hopes span the skies; in him do the secrets of God unfold. Now “to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ!  Amen” (Romans 16:27).

Uncoverings and Cover-Ups

After the recent interruption by Judah and his long story of redemption, we're traveling back in time to resume our journey into exile with Joseph. Chapter 39 opens on the note that “Joseph had been brought down to Egypt” – probably by a pretty somber two-week journey¹ – where he was “bought... from the hand of the Ishmaelites who had brought him down there” (Genesis 39:1). Joseph's first experience of Egypt and Egyptians is as a land and people who buy and sell human beings, a place of enslavement and domination.² Joseph was just one of the untold number of Asiatic slaves imported for sale at the slave markets,³ during a time in history when “Egypt absorbed growing numbers of people from Canaan.”⁴

But of all the people who could have bought this one particular Asiatic slave, providentially it was “Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, chief of the butchers, an Egyptian man” (Genesis 39:1). He was one of the higher-placed people in Egypt, in contact with Pharaoh whom Egyptians revered as a living god; Potiphar's particular job title might suggest he's responsible for the palace's meat provisions, or that he's a military leader with responsibility for palace security, or that he's the head executioner in Egypt. Whatever the case, Joseph was thereafter “in the house of his Egyptian master” (Genesis 39:2) – it was common for home-grown Egyptian slaves to work in the fields, while Asiatic slaves were kept for domestic service and skilled labor.⁵

But no sooner does Joseph enter enslavement here than we read a surprising note: that “the LORD was with him, and he became a prosperous man” (Genesis 39:2). In fact, “all that he did, the LORD caused it to prosper in his hand” (Genesis 39:3). “Grace from on high... arranged all his affairs..., grace from on high preceded him everywhere,”⁶ even in his servile work, whether or not he understood that this prosperity came from God's favor more than from his own natural skill.⁷ But Potiphar took notice and understood: Joseph's “master saw that the LORD was with him” (Genesis 39:3). It would've made sense in his own Egyptian terms, since wisdom handed down from the sage Ptahhotep told Potiphar that “the god is the one who made his accomplishment, intervening on his behalf while he was asleep.”⁸ The prospect of divine favor was very familiar to Potiphar.

So, soon enough, “Joseph found grace in his eyes and was with him,” becoming Potiphar's personal attendant, while Potiphar became something like a surrogate father to replace the one from whom Joseph had been cruelly torn away. In time, Potiphar even “appointed him over his house, and all that he had he gave into his hand” (Genesis 39:4). Joseph has become the controller of Potiphar's entire estate,⁹ the “chief operating officer” of Potiphar Domestic Industries, Inc.¹⁰ In the end, Potiphar “abandoned all that he had into the hand of Joseph, and he did not know for himself about anything except the bread that he ate” (Joseph 39:6). “Potiphar trusts him implicitly,”¹¹ and so Joseph has risen to serve as Potiphar's high steward,¹² “second only to Potiphar.”¹³

But why was Potiphar moved to abandon all his cares into the hand of this one man, a foreign slave? Simply on these grounds: “From the time that [Potiphar] appointed him over his house and over all that he had, the LORD blessed the house of the Egyptian for the sake of Joseph. The blessing of the LORD was on all that he had, in house and field” (Genesis 39:5). As Jacob in the house of Laban brought the LORD's blessing on an Aramean's affairs, so Joseph's service in the house of the Egyptian is now the LORD's conduit of blessing.¹⁴ Remember the words of God to Jacob that “in you and your seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed” (Genesis 28:14) – we would have thought it would happen through freedom, leadership, power, but instead we see that it begins when the chosen one becomes a lowly servant in exile among other nations; then, then the blessing begins to reach this foreign house that recognizes the working of God and that accordingly honors the service of the elect.

Now comes the drama. Not only was Joseph successful due to divine blessing flowing through him, but he took after his late mother Rachel's good looks. As he finishes his teen years and enters his early twenties, “Joseph was handsome in form and handsome in appearance” (Genesis 39:6), a “fine, comely young man in the very prime of life.”¹⁵ So after the elevation of Joseph and the relative abdication of Potiphar from active oversight in his household affairs, “his master's wife cast her eyes on Joseph” (Genesis 39:7), “seized by the beauty of his visage and conquered by the power of her passion.”¹⁶ She “fell in love with Joseph,”¹⁷ even fell “madly in love with him,”¹⁸ because the devil's envy schemed for Joseph “a terrible storm capable of causing him shipwreck.”¹⁹

And so Potiphar's wife “said, 'Lie with me'” (Genesis 39:7) – it's “coarse language” that “signals crass desire,” and also is spoken as a free woman's command to her household's slave.²⁰ The Egyptians had an old story about a scenario rather like this, where Anubis's wife approached her youthful brother-in-law Bata and “spoke to him, saying, 'There is great strength in you; I see your vigor daily.... Come, let us spend an hour lying together.'”²¹

So how will Joseph react? He's been cut off from his people for several years now, lonely, forsaken in a foreign land; he's at the mercy of these Egyptians; he's also “young and ripe for... the goading sting of the passions,”²² “in the flower of his age, when the flame of natural desire rises most powerfully, when the storm of desire is great, when reason is at its weakest;”²³ he otherwise has “no prospects of love” in his life.²⁴ So “how can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to [God's] word” (Psalm 119:9). The Law of Moses, had Joseph lived later, would thunder in his ears here, “Thou shalt not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14) – for “if a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor,” much less the wife of his master, “both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death” (Leviticus 20:10). Or the Proverbs of Solomon would sit him down and remind him that “the lips of a strange woman drip honey..., but in the end she is bitter as wormwood.... Her feet go down to death..., she does not ponder the path of life” (Proverbs 5:3-6), so “do not desire her beauty in her heart, and do not let her capture you with her eyelashes.... Can a man carry fire next to his chest and his clothes not be burned? So is he who goes in to his neighbor's wife” (Proverbs 6:25-29).

Well, Joseph didn't have the books of law and wisdom, but he surely had “the words which Jacob his father used to” share with him, the word of God in his time, which would have carried similar warnings.²⁵ Maybe Joseph's been mentally readying himself for this moment, having noticed how she's been starting to look at him.²⁶ To her two-word proposition, he gives a thirty-five-word refusal,²⁷ five sets of seven words “calculated to awaken her to a sense of shame” and to defy her command as gently and diplomatically as his convictions allow.²⁸

First, Joseph remarks on his lofty and comfortable life, how “my master doesn't know with me what's in the house, and all that he has, he has given into my hand; no one is greater in this house than I am” (Genesis 39:8-9). It's an impression of his position that resonates with his old dreams of supreme status, making us wonder if Joseph, despite his humbling in enslavement, still struggles with an “inflated sense of self.”²⁹ But, second, he points out that there's one natural limit on the jurisdiction Potiphar would've given him: “nor has he kept back anything from me except for you, because you are his wife” (Genesis 39:9). He who dreamt of himself on God's throne finally has wisdom enough to refuse to envision himself in Potiphar's bed.³⁰

Third, Joseph implicitly protests against her proposal, not just on grounds that it would be unlawful, but on the grounds that it would be ungrateful. Given how gracious Potiphar has been to him and how much trust he has placed in Joseph, how could she expect him to even consider betraying him? “How, then, can I do this great evil?” (Genesis 39:9). Wouldn't it be foolish even on Egyptian terms? Hadn't Ptahhotep taught that “if you want to make a friendship last in a home to which you enter..., be mindful of getting near the women?” And had he not cautioned that Mrs. Potiphar's demand here for “a wretched liaison..., a short moment, the likeness of a dream,” would be a disaster, since “for him who fails by lusting for it, no plan can succeed with him?”³¹ All this prosperity, all this success from the LORD which had lifted all their boats on its rising tide, would plummit. So “what is this great wrong you said to me?”, Joseph asks like the propositioned brother in the Egyptian tale.³²

Fourth, Joseph underscores that there's a religious factor she's neglecting to consider: “How, then, can I do this great evil and sin against God?” (Genesis 39:9). Even in Egyptian terms, shouldn't she expect her gods to one day weigh her heart against the feather of truth and justice?³³ How could either of them confess before their judges in the afterlife that they hadn't committed adultery,³⁴ if they abandon all scruples here and now? Doesn't she fear “a living god, punishing for his misdeed the one who does it?”³⁵ Joseph does (cf. Hebrews 13:4), and sees that “to submit to her demand... would represent a failure both to love God and to love his neighbor.”³⁶

What Joseph doesn't say, can't say, is a parallel he no doubt sees. Generations earlier in the narrative of Genesis, “the land of Egypt” was compared to “the garden of the LORD” (Genesis 13:10). In the Garden of the Lord, humanity was originally entrusted with an awesomely high stewardship of this earthly creation, and only one thing in the garden was held back: the fruit of a single tree, consumption of which would be a capital offense (Genesis 2:15-17). Joseph, as high steward of Potiphar, can see himself as standing in Adam's footprints: “each rules over the entire house,” yet “one thing remains outside their domain.”³⁷ In the Garden, the Serpent tempted the woman to consider the desirability of the forbidden fruit, and once it had delighted her eyes, not only did she partake of it, she prevailed on the man to do so as well, in full knowledge that it wasn't lawfully theirs to claim (Genesis 3:6). Joseph now, as Adam then, is facing temptation at the hands of a woman already beguiled, a woman for whom Joseph's own body is the forbidden fruit she's determined to taste.³⁸ So the question he faces is, will he to whom much has been given now arrogate to himself the one thing held back? Or will gratitude and reverence win the day, triumphing over the Tempter's power now as they didn't then? Joseph has resolved himself to chart a new course, to prove that the Garden could've gone differently; and so his answer to Potiphar's wife is, in essence, how Adam should've spoken to Eve, how Eve should've rebuffed the Serpent.

Implicitly, Joseph “besought [his master's wife] to govern her passions,”³⁹ urging her “to remain steadfast in the love of her own husband.”⁴⁰ And one would've hoped that that would've settled the matter. But of course it didn't – that'd be too simple. After hearing Joseph's calm, collected, gentle rebuff, Potiphar's wife is too smitten and too desirous to back down. To her Egyptian logic, it might've made sense: she would have thought of her love for Joseph as something that he had forced on her by being so obviously desirable.⁴¹ She was “on fire with the poison of lust,”⁴² “insolent, demanding, and wanton.”⁴³ And so “she spoke with Joseph day after day,” for a whole year,⁴⁴ maybe seven years,⁴⁵ imploring him “to lie beside her, to be with her” (Genesis 39:10).  She acts as “a shameless woman who kept prodding [Joseph] to transgress with her,”⁴⁶ who aimed to “wear down his resistance” over time.⁴⁷ This was “a daily temptation, not easily dismissed,”⁴⁸ and today we'd surely consider it a clear case of “workplace sexual harassment.”⁴⁹ She's hoping that “with much seductive speech she persuades him; with her smooth talk she compels him” (Proverbs 7:22).

Later readers envisioned the elaborate tactics she could've used: flattery of Joseph's virtues,⁵⁰ embraces on the pretext of a motherly relationship,⁵¹ enticements with freedom or wealth or power,⁵² threats to kill Potiphar unless Joseph gave in,⁵³ threats to kill herself unless Joseph gave in,⁵⁴ threats to make his life miserable out of “vengeance and hatred” if he didn't give in,⁵⁵ promises of conversion to his faith if he gave in,⁵⁶ assurances he could cover his sin by charity to the poor,⁵⁷ attempts to drug him with love potions or magic spells,⁵⁸ and of course showing skin or dressing to the nines.⁵⁹ One reader pictured her “wafting perfumes, presenting herself alluringly with painted eyes, seductive voice..., soft garments, bedecked with gold, and with a myriad of other such machinations to bewitch the young man.”⁶⁰ So his struggle here isn't theoretical, isn't an abstract quandary of ethics; it's very practical, “emotional and quite physical,” this challenge she poses.⁶¹

But throughout daily temptations for a year or seven years, Joseph “did not yield” to her passionate wishes,⁶² but instead “continually restrained himself and strove against his desire.”⁶³ He “would not hear her,” we read (Genesis 39:10), unlike Adam who “heard” Eve's invitation to sin and complied (Genesis 3:17).⁶⁴ “Joseph... purified his mind from all promiscuity,” and “his soul's deliberation rejected evil desire” for his master's wife⁶⁵ – a steady course of resistance perhaps reinforced by a regiment of prayer and fasting against her temptations.⁶⁶

Onward ran this persistent cycle of temptations until, at last, Potiphar's wife's patience ran out, and she prepared to make her final move. She selected the occasion carefully, on “this day when he went into the house to do his work,” as a diligent high steward of the household, “and not a man of the men of the house was there in the house” at the time (Genesis 39:11). Then, in this rare and contrived privacy, Potiphar's wife “displayed only a more violent ardor” than ever before.⁶⁷ “Satan entered into her,” it must have seemed, “and she rushed forward and grabbed him tightly,”⁶⁸ falling on Joseph “like a wild animal grinding its teeth.”⁶⁹ She “caught him by his garment, saying, 'Lie with me!'” (Genesis 39:12). She “embraced him and seized him... so that she might force him to lie with her,”⁷⁰ “draw him by force to an unlawful bed,”⁷¹ to be the Shechem to his Dinah (cf. Genesis 34:2).⁷² She's gripping the forbidden fruit, and aims to shove it down her Adam's throat if need be.

The decisive moment has come, the last temptation with maximal pressure. What will Joseph do now? Has he been worn down over time? Are his hormones stealing the show? Is he simply frozen in shock? Her command carries the weight of life and death. But Joseph resolves, in this moment when it most counts, that he “preferred to die free of sin rather than to choose participation in guilty power,”⁷³ that he is “unwilling to offend the eyes” of the God who ever watches deeds and weighs hearts.⁷⁴ As fully as Potiphar had abandoned his estate into Joseph's hands, now Joseph “abandoned his garment into her hand” (Genesis 39:12), letting her unconsciously recreate “the scene of his brothers' betrayal” when they, too, stripped him of his special robe.⁷⁵ For “he did not value the clothing of his body higher than the chastity of his soul,” which “kept the uncorrupted garments of virtue.”⁷⁶ Freeing himself from her grasp, “he fled” – “fled naked, crying aloud [to God], 'Chastely I live for you!'”⁷⁷ – and then “he walked outside,” sounding no alarm (Genesis 39:12).

When they succumbed to temptation, Adam and Eve then knew themselves as naked in their guilt, and so strove to clothe themselves (Genesis 3:7); but Joseph, to reject temptation, was willing to be stripped naked,⁷⁸ “leaving him vulnerable and exposed.”⁷⁹ But it was by embracing this vulnerability, submitting to this exposure, that Joseph could hold his head high as he exited the house beneath the unblinking sun above. Undeceived, uncowed, “unconquered by passion,”⁸⁰ Joseph's chastity “overcame the Egyptian,”⁸¹ and thus he “escaped from her domination.”⁸² He's so unlike his brother Judah, whose moral weakness was all over the last chapter.⁸³ And Joseph “succeeds where Adam fails, refusing to sin against God where the first man disobeyed God,” so that his “faithfulness and righteousness... amounts to a reversal,” at least at a literary level, “of the disobedience and unfaithfulness of Adam.”⁸⁴ Joseph thereby proves himself “more beautiful in the light of his heart than in the skin of his body,” owing to “the inner beauty of chastity.”⁸⁵

The word 'chastity' gets a bad rap, largely through being misunderstood. Chastity is “a virtue regulating contact with a sacred dimension of human life.”⁸⁶ Chastity means seeking our human nature's “orientation, enacted through integral reconciliation, towards fullness of life,”⁸⁷ towards living “attentively and reverently..., a way of being alive in the world,”⁸⁸ and so governing our actions in the world in light of “the value of the person in every situation.”⁸⁹ In that light, “it is the chaste person whose gaze can genuinely behold and affirm the dignity of the other,”⁹⁰ including Joseph beholding and affirming the dignity of Potiphar's wife, “because chastity is a social virtue that has to do with human relationships truly founded on love over against selfish desire or vainglorious manipulation.”⁹¹ Chastity “realizes the order of reason in the province of sexuality,”⁹² “the conscious education of the sexual drive” toward “its maturing, with a view to flourishing and fruitfulness,”⁹³ enabling “the person's sexual powers to be exercised intelligently and freely in accord with the goods of human nature.”⁹⁴ Chastity aims to preserve “the elegance of a coherent whole”⁹⁵ and to give us “tranquility of body and soul,”⁹⁶ so that sights and thoughts of beauty can move us “to offer glory to God.”⁹⁷ That's the virtue Joseph loved, embodied, and taught us about when he resisted temptation to the very end.

But Joseph's story isn't done. In the verses after his departure outdoors, we're left behind in the house, taken out of Joseph's sandals and put into those of Potiphar's wife. She's been decisively scorned by the one she thinks she loves – and you know what has no fury like a woman scorned, they say. Not only that, but “she saw that he had abandoned his garment in her hand and had fled out of the house” (Genesis 39:13). What might he tell the other slaves, and what if the fact that she had been spurned made her “a laughingstock in the eyes of her servants”?⁹⁸ Worse, what might Joseph say to his master Potiphar? In spite and self-interest, she “assuaged her love with anger, linking passion to passion,”⁹⁹ aiming to exculpate herself by throwing Joseph under the bus. It's the same tactic used by the wife in that old Egyptian story, who accused the object of her lust of having lusted after her instead, and who then faked being the victim in order to avoid being blamed.¹⁰⁰

Just so, Potiphar's wife calls out to the house-servants who are out-of-doors, and cleverly tailors her speech to their ears as she “aims to win them over as feigned witnesses on her behalf.”¹⁰¹ “Look! He” – Potiphar, your master – “has brought among us a Hebrew man to mock us!” (Genesis 39:14). She's careful not to slur Joseph as a slave, but appeals to her solidarity with them as Egyptians over against this foreigner who threatens Egyptian values.¹⁰² And she ascribes to Potiphar himself the intent to mock and provoke them by appointing Joseph over them, thus playing on their “natural jealousy or resentment” of this Hebrew man's authority and privilege in their land.¹⁰³ It's then that she tells her backwards version of events: that Joseph came on to her (no he didn't), that she cried out in distress (no she didn't), and that that's why he ran away (Genesis 39:14-15).¹⁰⁴

That evening, when Potiphar gets home from his business in Pharaoh's service, she's waiting and ready to put on her act. She's been keeping Joseph's garment close this whole time, perhaps alternately stirred by bitterness and by continuing desire (Genesis 39:16).¹⁰⁵ It's amusing and maybe significant that the word Genesis uses for his garment has the same spelling in Hebrew as 'treachery,' as 'betrayal.'¹⁰⁶ When she sees Potiphar, “she spoke to him like these words, saying, 'The Hebrew slave whom you brought among us came in to mock me'” – or, maybe it could be translated, 'molest me' – “'but as soon as I lifted up my voice and cried out, he abandoned his garment with me and fled outside'” (Genesis 39:17-18). She emphasizes Joseph's status as an untrustworthy Asiatic slave to underscore the outrage of such impudent behavior as she claims he tried to pull.¹⁰⁷ She keeps badgering Potiphar, falsely protesting that “like these things did your slave do unto me” (Genesis 39:19).¹⁰⁸

It's like the Greek story of Bellerophon, the guest of King Proitos, whose queen, the tale goes, “yearned to lie with him secretly, yet could never overcome the high-minded refusals of steadfast Bellerophon, so she made up a false story that she told to King Proitos: 'Either die yourself, Proitos, or else kill Bellerophon, who attempted to lie with me in love against my will.'”¹⁰⁹ But unlike the wife of Proitos, the wife of Potiphar has ostensible evidence: she's waving Joseph's garment before her husband's face, making this the second time in a row that Joseph's been lied about by someone who steals his clothes!¹¹⁰ Her threefold accusation almost reads like a parody of God's sentences of judgment on the serpent, woman, and man in the Garden (Genesis 3:14-19).

Hearing his wife's testimony, we aren't told that Potiphar heard Joseph's side of things. Maybe Joseph protested and the Bible just passed over it;¹¹¹ maybe Potiphar cared not “to investigate the truth” and afforded him no chance to speak;¹¹² or maybe Joseph “patiently bore the accusation of an adulterous mistress..., unwilling to answer in view of his clear conscience,”¹¹³ and so he “nobly kept silence and committed his cause to God.”¹¹⁴ We read that Potiphar's “anger was kindled,” but aren't actually told at whom Potiphar was angry (Genesis 39:19).¹¹⁵ Up to now, it seems like Joseph's been almost closer to Potiphar than his own wife has.¹¹⁶ And yet, with her evidence and (supposed) witnesses, and the situation public in his house, “Potiphar has no choice but to punish Joseph.”¹¹⁷ He believes he's doing justice, that he's purging immorality from his house, defending his family, punishing an evildoer; he has no idea that, deceived in his rage, he's embracing a would-be adulteress and her lies,¹¹⁸ and “condemning the guiltless one,” his truest friend.¹¹⁹

Now, we'd expect that the chief of butchers, especially if he was royal executioner, would resort swiftly to his trade and put Joseph to death; certainly he ought to, if he truly believes his wife's testimony. After all, like Reuben with Bilhah, Potiphar's wife's story suggests that Joseph, as high steward, might have been trying to seize power and claim Potiphar's very life for his own.¹²⁰ In the Greek legend of Hippolytus, when his stepmother Phaedra tried to seduce him and he refused her for the sake of chastity, and she accused him of sexual assault, her husband Theseus, his own father, cursed him to die.¹²¹ But Potiphar doesn't curse Joseph. Neither does he, as Proitos does to Bellerophon, send Joseph off into an intended trap “to secure his death.”¹²² No, he sends Joseph to prison. Joseph is judged guilty and banished from the garden of Potiphar's favor, but – unlike Adam evicted from Eden (Genesis 3:24) – it's precisely because of Joseph's innocence that he's jailed.¹²³

The Egyptian folktale didn't end this way. There, when the enraged husband went to kill his accused brother, “the youth rebuked” him and “let him know all that had happened between him and his wife,” with the result that, when the husband went home in distress, he “killed his wife, cast her to the dogs, and sat mourning.”¹²⁴ In one of those Greek stories, when the husband finally learned of his wife's lies, he buried her alive.¹²⁵ But Genesis isn't interested in seeing Potiphar's wife punished, though some later retellings at least show her confess and repent.¹²⁶ Instead, we're left with Potiphar's wife carrying on up above while Joseph is stripped and in a pit, just where his brothers had put him years before.¹²⁷ The clothes Potiphar had given him have been torn away, divesting him from his prosperity and disconnecting Joseph from his Egyptian foster household.¹²⁸

But through it all, “the LORD was with Joseph and showed him mercy” (Genesis 39:21). That's why Joseph did not die. If “blameless Bellerophon” ended up “Bellerophon, hated by all the gods,”¹²⁹ Joseph is anything but hated in the sight of God. Potiphar forsook his estate into Joseph's hand, Joseph forsook his garment into a tempter's hand, but the LORD is “with [Joseph],” “will not leave [him] or forsake [him]” (Deuteronomy 31:8). In fact, the LORD “gave him grace in the eyes of the chief of the house of roundness,” the prison – so much so that he “gave into Joseph's hand all the prisoners who were in the house of roundness; and all whatsoever they did there, it was his doing. The chief of the house of roundness didn't shepherd any of the things in his hand, because the LORD was with him, and whatever he did, the LORD made it to prosper” (Genesis 39:21-23). For “grace from on high reaches us in generous measure, when we, too, give evidence to great virtue.”¹³⁰

We know that we're living today in an exceptionally unchaste culture, worse than ancient Egypt by far, where “sex seems to permeate our everyday lives.”¹³¹ Especially since the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, “sex was endlessly and everywhere promoted as the most desirable thing on the planet;”¹³² rules and norms have been widely overturned, inverted, rewritten, and denied. Now, to quote one sociologist, “cheap sex has been mass-produced” because Americans feel like “sexual expression and how we experience it is close to the heart of being human.”¹³³  Now as ever, “temptations to sin are sure to come” (Luke 17:1). In such a “culture of excess, the chaste person is the truly free person,”¹³⁴ so the story of Joseph should mean more and more to us as we hear and read of outrageous scandals day in and day out, and as we reflect on our own behavior, our own hearts, our own way of looking at and thinking about others. Out of love for God and neighbor, Joseph clung to chastity even when he knew his refusal to give an inch would be costly – as it can cost today, too, in forms like ridicule, exclusion, and slander.¹³⁵ “Let us... recall in every circumstance those words of Joseph, 'How could I do this wicked deed and commit sin in God's eyes?' So when some temptation disturbs us, let us turn these words over in our mind,” praying that “every unholy desire will immediately be put to flight.”¹³⁶

Most of all, though, may Joseph point us to One greater than he. For “even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve” (Mark 10:45), having “emptied himself by taking the form of a slave..., and, being found in human form, he humbled himself” (Philippians 2:7-8). “He undertook this on our behalf,” we who “once presented [our] members as slaves to impurity” (Romans 6:19), “so that he might drive away the slavery of the world, restore the liberty of paradise, and grant new grace.”¹³⁷

Jesus Christ “in every respect has been tempted as we are” (Hebrews 4:15). But he endured. He offered to his Father a life perfectly chaste in every way, in every moment, in every embrace, in every gaze he set upon others. But “many bore false witness against him” (Mark 14:56), despite the fact that “he committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth” – then, “when he was reviled, he did not revile in return..., but continued entrusting himself to the One who judges justly” (1 Peter 2:22-23). “Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter..., so he opened not his mouth” (Isaiah 53:7). “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24), being “delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification” (Romans 4:25), “that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24).

Now the risen Christ “is able to help those who are being tempted” (Hebrews 2:18). “And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure” (1 John 3:3). May we so purify ourselves; may we live chastely, lovingly, virtuously, with integrity before the eyes of God and man; and may we, with the grace of our Lord, be made to prosper in every circumstance, high or low. Amen.