Genesis 39 · Story · Self-control
Joseph and Potiphar's Wife
Genesis 39 tells in twenty-three verses how a slave in Egypt refused his master's wife and went to prison on her charge.
A slave with no family in the land and no witness in the house still said no, day after day.
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?”
- Where
- Egypt
- Who
- Joseph
- When
- between Joseph's seventeenth and thirtieth years (Genesis 37:2 and 41:46)
Summary
Genesis 39 sets Joseph, a slave trusted with a whole household, against the steady pressure of his master's wife. The chapter shows self-control as desire ruled under the fear of God, kept where no one could see it and paid for with prison. It ends with the LORD's kindness to Joseph in the place his refusal put him.
- Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh and captain of the guard, bought Joseph and put everything he owned in his care (Genesis 39:1 to 6).
- Joseph gave two reasons in one sentence: his master had withheld nothing from him but his wife, and the act would be a sin against God (Genesis 39:8 to 9).
- When she seized him in an empty house, he left his cloak in her hand and ran, and she showed the cloak as proof of a charge she made up (Genesis 39:11 to 18).
- Potiphar had Joseph thrown into the prison for the king's prisoners, where the LORD showed him kindness and the warden put him in charge (Genesis 39:20 to 23).
One Chapter, One Refusal
The story stands in Genesis 39, between the sale of Joseph in Genesis 37 and his rise before Pharaoh in Genesis 41.
This is the story of Joseph in the house of Potiphar, told from his purchase in Egypt to his first months in prison. It belongs to self-control, the fruit of the Spirit that Paul names last in Galatians 5:23, whose lack Proverbs 25:28 pictures as a city with its walls broken down.
The question it answers is how a young man with every opportunity and no witness kept himself from sin, and what it cost him. The page sets the chapter on a timeline and tells its four movements with their verses. It reads Joseph's answer in his own words and traces the garment from Genesis 37 to 41. It then sets the later Jewish and Christian traditions apart from Scripture and gives three questions on which readers disagree.
Thirteen Years and Two Ages
Nine stations run from Joseph's sale to his rise before Pharaoh, each with its verse.
Between Joseph's seventeenth year and his thirtieth, the text dates only the two full years after the cupbearer forgot him.
- Joseph is seventeen, before his brothers sell him"When Joseph was seventeen years old, he was tending the flock with his brothers"Genesis 37:2
- Potiphar buys him from the Ishmaelites (no year given)"an Egyptian named Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh and captain of the guard, bought him from the Ishmaelites"Genesis 39:1
- The asking begins (no year given)"and after some time his master’s wife cast her eyes upon Joseph"Genesis 39:7
- The asking is repeated (no count of days given)"Although Potiphar’s wife spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused"Genesis 39:10
- The empty house (no date given)"One day, however, Joseph went into the house to attend to his work"Genesis 39:11
- Joseph is put in the king's prison (no date given)"had him thrown into the prison where the king’s prisoners were confined"Genesis 39:20
- Two of Pharaoh's officials are held with him"After they had been in custody for some time,"Genesis 40:4
- The cupbearer forgets him for two years"After two full years had passed, Pharaoh had a dream"Genesis 41:1
- Joseph is thirty when he enters Pharaoh's service"Now Joseph was thirty years old when he entered the service of Pharaoh king of Egypt."Genesis 41:46
A timeline of nine stations, each carrying the words of its verse from the Berean text.
Two of Pharaoh's officials are held with him, The cupbearer forgets him for two years, Joseph is thirty when he enters Pharaoh's service
The Chapter in Four Movements
The house, the asking, the cloak and the prison follow one another in twenty-three verses.
The LORD was with Joseph in Potiphar's houseGenesis 39:1 to 6
And the LORD was with Joseph, and he became a successful man, serving in the household of his Egyptian master.The verse names the cause of everything Joseph did well in Egypt.
Potiphar saw that the LORD made Joseph prosper, made him his personal attendant and put him in charge of all he owned (Genesis 39:3 to 4). The LORD blessed the Egyptian's household and field on Joseph's account, and Potiphar left everything in his care except the food he ate (Genesis 39:5 to 6).
His master's wife asked him every day, and he refused every dayGenesis 39:6 to 10
The text adds that Joseph was well-built and handsome (Genesis 39:6), and that he refused her from the first (Genesis 39:7 to 8).
Although Potiphar’s wife spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to bed with her or even be near her.The verse shows the refusal kept up over many days, and it shows Joseph keeping away from her as well as saying no.
In the empty house she seized his cloak, and he ranGenesis 39:11 to 18
One day, however, Joseph went into the house to attend to his work, and not a single household servant was inside. She grabbed Joseph by his cloak and said, “Sleep with me!” But leaving his cloak in her hand, he escaped and ran outside.These verses hold the one moment in the story when no servant could see, and Joseph's answer to it was to run.
She called the household servants and told them that the Hebrew had come to her and fled when she screamed, leaving his cloak beside her (Genesis 39:13 to 15). She kept the cloak until Potiphar came home and told him the same story (Genesis 39:16 to 18).
His master burned with anger and put him in the king's prisonGenesis 39:19 to 23
So Joseph’s master took him and had him thrown into the prison where the king’s prisoners were confined. While Joseph was there in the prison, the LORD was with him and extended kindness to him, granting him favor in the eyes of the prison warden.The verses set the price of Joseph's refusal beside the LORD's kindness to him in the place where it put him.
The warden put all the prisoners under Joseph's care and did not concern himself with anything in his hands (Genesis 39:22 to 23). The words of Genesis 39:6 about Potiphar's trust come back here about the warden's.
His Answer in His Own Words
Joseph names his master's trust and his God, and the verse gives them equal place.
Joseph's answer runs across two verses. First he speaks of his master, who "has entrusted everything he owns to my care" (Genesis 39:8). In Genesis 39:9 he names the one thing withheld from him and asks, "So how could I do such a great evil and sin against God?"
In the Hebrew the last clause reads word for word "how will I do the evil, the great, this, and I will sin to God". The STEP tagging of the verse marks the words for evil, great and sin, and it ends the sentence with Elohim, God. Joseph calls the act a great evil against the man who trusted him and a sin against God.
Henry held that trust binds a servant even in secretMatthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, on Genesis 39:8 to 9
“Note, We are bound in honour, as well as justice and gratitude, not in any thing to injure those that have a good opinion of us and place a trust in us, how secretly soever it may be done.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible · on Genesis 39:8 to 9Puritan
The Garment From Genesis 37 to 41
A robe, a widow's garments and a cloak carry the evidence in three chapters, and new clothes end the thread.
Twice a garment is carried to a man in authority as false evidence, and between the two Tamar's pledge is evidence that tells the truth.
| Scene | The Berean text | Where it stands |
|---|---|---|
| Jacob's gift | "so he made him a robe of many colors." | Genesis 37:3 |
| The bloodied robe | "Then they took Joseph’s robe, slaughtered a young goat, and dipped the robe in its blood." | Genesis 37:31 |
| The question to Jacob | "Examine it to see whether it is your son’s robe or not." | Genesis 37:32 |
| Tamar's disguise | "she removed her widow’s garments, covered her face with a veil to disguise herself" | Genesis 38:14 |
| Tamar's question to Judah | "Please examine them. Whose seal and cord and staff are these?" | Genesis 38:25 |
| The cloak left behind | "But leaving his cloak in her hand, he escaped and ran outside." | Genesis 39:12 |
| Clothes changed for the palace | "After he had shaved and changed his clothes, he went in before Pharaoh." | Genesis 41:14 |
| The fine linen of office | "clothed him in garments of fine linen, and placed a gold chain around his neck." | Genesis 41:42 |
Clothes changed for the palace, The fine linen of office
The two requests to look closely, in Genesis 37:32 and Genesis 38:25, are one form of the same Hebrew verb, nakar, in the STEP tagging of both verses. The first request carried a lie, and the second carried the truth.
The word for Joseph's cloak, beged, is the common Hebrew word for clothing, which the STEP lexicon counts 217 times. Genesis Rabbah records the echo in a saying of Rabbi Yohanan, that God told Judah, "You said: 'Identify, please'; as you live, Tamar will say to you: 'Identify, please'" (Genesis Rabbah 84:19).
An Egyptian story of the same shape is set beside Genesis 39 on the page Joseph and the Tale of Two Brothers.
The Later Traditions
Jewish writers after Genesis named the occasion, the means and the motives that the chapter leaves untold.
Josephus, Jewish Antiquities book 2, chapter 4, heads his retelling "Concerning The Signal Chastity Of Joseph" in William Whiston's translation. He says that in Potiphar's house Joseph "demonstrated that wisdom was able to govern the uneasy passions of life" (2.4.1).
Josephus, the Babylonian Talmud (Sotah 36b) and Genesis Rabbah 87:7 agree that the house was empty because of a festival. Genesis says only that "not a single household servant was inside" (Genesis 39:11), so the festival is the traditions' explanation and the text gives none.
The Testament of Joseph calls its subject sobrietyThe Testament of Joseph, in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, translated by Robert Sinker (1886)
The Testament of Joseph is titled "Concerning Sobriety" in Sinker's translation. In it Joseph says, "In ten temptations He showed me approved, and in all of them I endured" (2), and "I fasted in those seven years" (3). It closes, "if you therefore follow after sobriety and purity in patience and humility of heart, the Lord will dwell among you, because He loves sobriety" (10).
The Testament calls Potiphar "the chief cook of Pharaoh" (2) and his wife "the Egyptian woman of Memphis" (3). Genesis gives neither detail, and it names neither the woman nor the seven years.
Genesis Rabbah gives Potiphar a private doubtGenesis Rabbah 87:9, Sefaria Midrash Rabbah (2022), CC BY
Genesis Rabbah 87:9 has Potiphar say to Joseph, "I know that you did not do this, but it is so I will not attach stigma to my children". It is a sage's explanation of the lighter sentence, and Genesis 39:19 records only that Potiphar burned with anger.
What the Text Leaves Unsaid
Genesis gives no age for Joseph in these years and records nothing of his prayers in the chapter.
Two commentators put an age to the undated years, and each is one writer's reckoning. Albert Barnes counts back from the births of Judah's sons and places Joseph "in his twenty-fourth" year when the chapter opens. John Gill reports that the medieval scholar Ibn Ezra thought the day of the empty house came "rather a year" after the asking began.
The chapter records no prayer of Joseph's and no word from God to him.
Self-control in Potiphar's House
Scripture later commands the flight Joseph took, and teachers of the church read what it cost him.
Joseph named the sin for what it was, kept away from her, and ran when he was seized.
Flee from youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, together with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.Paul tells Timothy to flee youthful passions and to pursue what is right, which is what Joseph did in the empty house.
No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, He will also provide an escape, so that you can stand up under it.Paul promises that God provides an escape in temptation, and the door Joseph ran through was one.
John Chrysostom read Joseph as the free man of the house. In his Homilies on First Corinthians (Homily 19) he wrote, "Joseph was a slave but not a slave to men: wherefore even in slavery he was freer than all that are free. For instance, he yielded not to his mistress".
John Calvin, in his Commentary on Genesis, held that "a real fear of God reigned in his mind" (on Genesis 39:10). On the day of the empty house, Calvin wrote, Joseph "chose to sacrifice his character, and was prepared to relinquish life itself, rather than to be guilty of such wickedness before God" (on Genesis 39:11).
Ambrose of Milan, in On the Duties of the Clergy, wrote that Joseph "mocked at death, repressed his fear, and chose a prison" (book 2, chapter 11). In Concerning Repentance (book 1, chapter 14) he said that "because he did not admit the fire into the bosom of his mind, his body was not burnt".
Years later, before his brothers, Joseph went out to weep in private, washed his face and came back, and "Regaining his composure, he said, 'Serve the meal'" (Genesis 43:31). In Genesis 45:1 he "could no longer control himself" and sent everyone out before he made himself known to them.
Teachers on the Scene
Matthew Henry read the daily asking of Genesis 39:10 as an assault on chastity.
1662 to 1714 · Matthew Henry
Commentary on the Whole Bible
The quotation1 quotation
“The temptation he was assaulted with was very strong. Never was a more violent onset made upon the fort of chastity than this recorded here. (1.) The sin he was tempted to was uncleanness, which considering his youth, his beauty, his single state, and his plentiful living at the table of a ruler, was a sin which, one would think, might most easily beset him and betray him.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible · on Genesis 39:10Puritan
Three Questions Readers Ask
The chapter leaves Joseph's errand, Potiphar's mind and the weight of Joseph's two reasons open, and readers answer each in more than one way.
What does "to attend to his work" imply in Genesis 39:11?Babylonian Talmud, Sotah 36b; Genesis Rabbah 87:7; Calvin
One reading holds that Joseph came in on his ordinary duties and found the house empty. One sage in Sotah 36b takes the words literally, and Rabbi Nehemya in Genesis Rabbah 87:7 says he came to calculate his master's accounts. Calvin calls the day "the crisis of the combat" after many days of refusal. Its strongest point is that Genesis 39:10 has just said he would not even be near her.
Another reading holds that Joseph came near to yielding. The other sage in Sotah 36b and Rabbi Shmuel bar Nahman in Genesis Rabbah 87:7 read the errand that way, and Sotah 36b says that his father's image appeared to him and stopped him. The objection to it is that the text gives Joseph's mind only in his refusal of Genesis 39:9. The objection to the first reading is that it does not explain why the verse stresses that no one was inside. The text does not settle it.
Why did Potiphar choose prison for Joseph?Genesis Rabbah 87:9; Calvin; Josephus
Genesis Rabbah holds that Potiphar doubted his wife and spared Joseph's life for that reason. Calvin holds the reverse, that Potiphar believed her and acted rashly. He wrote that "the levity with which he instantly thrust a servant, whom he had found prudent and honest, into prison, without examining the cause, cannot be excused". Josephus agrees with Calvin that Potiphar took his wife's word.
The objection to the first view is that the text names Potiphar's anger and no doubt. The objection to the second is that a master who believed the charge held a slave's life in his hand and gave the lesser sentence. Genesis records the anger and the prison and is silent on the reason.
Which of Joseph's two reasons weighs more?Genesis 39:8 to 9; Calvin; Matthew Henry
Calvin holds that the fear of God is the root: "nothing is more powerful to overcome temptation than the fear of God". Matthew Henry gives his master's trust its own weight beside it, as the quotation under His Answer in His Own Words shows. Josephus, too, has Joseph refuse to wrong the man who bought him.
The text names both reasons in one sentence and ranks neither, so the first reading rests on the order of the clauses and the second on the length Joseph gives to his master.
The LORD Was With Joseph
The chapter ends in prison with the same words it began with in the house.
Joseph's self-control did not keep him out of prison. It kept him in the company of the God who was with him there.
The warden did not concern himself with anything under Joseph’s care, because the LORD was with Joseph and gave him success in whatever he did.The verse gives the LORD's presence as the reason the warden trusted Joseph with everything.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- STEP Bible TOTHT and TBESH, Tyndale House, CC BY 4.0.
- Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710)
- John Calvin, Commentary on Genesis, volume 2, translated by John King, Calvin Translation Society.
- Albert Barnes, Notes on the Bible, on Genesis 39.
- John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament (1748 to 1763), on Genesis 39:11.
- John Chrysostom, Homilies on First Corinthians, Homily 19, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, first series, volume 12.
- Ambrose of Milan, On the Duties of the Clergy (book 2, chapter 11, section 59) and Concerning Repentance (book 1, chapter 14, section 72), translated by H. de Romestin, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, volume 10 (1896)
- Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, book 2, chapters 4 and 5, translated by William Whiston.
- The Testament of Joseph, in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, translated by Robert Sinker, Ante-Nicene Fathers, volume 8 (1886)
- Genesis Rabbah 84:19 and 87:7 to 9, Sefaria Midrash Rabbah (2022), CC BY.
- Babylonian Talmud, Sotah 36b, The William Davidson Talmud (Koren), CC BY-NC.
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