Read with Me
Genesis 39:6b-15 (HCSB)
Now Joseph was well-built and handsome. After some time his master’s wife looked longingly at Joseph and said, “Sleep with me.”
But he refused. “Look,” he said to his master’s wife, “with me here my master does not concern himself with anything in his house, and he has put all that he owns under my authority. No one in this house is greater than I am. He has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. So how could I do such a great evil and sin against God?”
Although she spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to bed with her. Now one day he went into the house to do his work, and none of the household servants were there. She grabbed him by his garment and said, “Sleep with me!” But leaving his garment in her hand, he escaped and ran outside. When she saw that he had left his garment with her and had run outside, she called the household servants. “Look,” she said to them, “my husband brought a Hebrew man to make fools of us. He came to me so he could sleep with me, and I screamed as loud as I could. When he heard me screaming for help, he left his garment with me and ran outside.”
Listen with Me
Despite his reputation among his brothers as a pest and a “daddy’s boy”, and despite all the privations he had recently endured, Joseph proved himself repeatedly to be a man of sterling character. Intrigue and sexual liaisons were common in the Egyptian court, and it would have been easy for Joseph to jump in and participate. It could even have proved beneficial any upward aspirations he might have, as Potiphar’s wife held a high rank in the society of the day, and a well-placed word in the ear of the right person could ensure that good things would happen for Joseph.
But Joseph realized that he had been given the authority and responsibility that he currently enjoyed not due to intrigue but due to his proving faithful and worthy of Potiphar’s trust, trust which could be completely destroyed by a single act of betrayal. He was also keenly aware of God’s expectations on him as a descendant of Abraham Isaac and Jacob. Any sin he committed would place him outside God’s blessing, and thus he would find himself very much on his own in a hostile environment.
But Potiphar’s wife had no such moral compass to guide her actions. Instead, like so many others who had reached some level of importance in society, she was focused on her own desires and how to fulfill them. She simply wouldn’t take no for an answer, and she was frankly stunned that a slave like Joseph would resist her advances.
She quickly began to take this resistance personally. That meant that she had to win in order to preserve her self-image. She would either get Joseph into bed, or she would destroy him. And since he finally fled from her, desperately leaving his cloak in her grasping hand, she decided that he must be destroyed.
Her plan was easily designed and implemented. She yelled for help, and when the servants came running, she claimed that Joseph just had attacked her, tried to rape her. And with his cloak in her hand as proof, the evidence seemed to back up her story.
Pray with Me
It is a sad truth that living a life of integrity in a broken and sinful world is not only difficult, but it can be downright dangerous! But even in the midst of these challenges, You were powerfully with Joseph, strengthening him, guiding him, and even protecting him from the harshest penalty that he could have suffered as a result of these false charges: death. We see You working in the same way with those through whom You have worked in both the Old Testament and the New. And we can still see it today. Thank You, Lord, for Your guidance, Your wisdom, Your inspiration, and Your protection in my life. Amen.