Potiphar and His Wife Desire Joseph

This verse acts as a “resumptive repetition,” taking up the narrative where it left off at the end of chapter 37, following the interlude of the story of Judah and Tamar in chapter 38. But in Genesis 37:36, the slave traders are identified as Midianites, whereas in 37:28, it is the Ishmaelites who draw Joseph out of the pit and sell him to the Midianties. The documentary hypothesis delineates two sources—E source (which identifies the slave traders as Midianite) and the J source (which identifies them as Ishmaelite). In an attempt to harmonize the text, Rashi suggests that Joseph was traded back and forth many times. See Ben Sandler, “Encountering the Documentary Hypothesis in the Joseph Story,” TheTorah (2014). Editor’s note: On the resumptive repetition as a literary strategy, see Zev Farber, “The Resumptive Repetition, (Wiederaufnahme),” TheTorah (2013).

Castration became a common practice for courtiers in the later Babylonian and Persian Empire, especially for those who served in the women’s house (Est 2:3, 14, and 15; Isa 56:3; Jer 38:7). Hence the LXX renders the Hebrew, saris, here as euvnou/coj (eunuch) and the Vulgate follows suit: Putiphar eunuchus Pharaonis (loc. cit.). See the discussion in James Kugel, In Potiphar’s House (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 75–76.

See also Yalk. 145, Tg. Ps-Jon on Gen 39:1, b. Sotah 13b.

The identification of Potiphar with Poti-phera also has precedent in the LXX, which names both as Petephres (alt. Pentephres). The midrashic tradition follows suit in combining the two figures, in adherence to principle of “conservation of biblical personalities,” a midrashic technique of identifying different biblical characters as one and the same person.

The text here follows Munich 95 which, along with other manuscripts, differs from the Vilna printing.

Marcus Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumin, the Talmud Bavli and Jerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (New York: Verlag Choreb, 1926), 1235.

The reason for the second mutilation is unclear—which is ostensibly why the printed edition of the text is missing the two-stage process—but the commentator R. Betzalel Ashkenazi, in his Shita Mekubetzet, offers an imaginative suggestion:

בשעה שאמר פרעה ובלעדיך לא ירים וגו׳ אמרו אצטגניני פרעה עבד שלקחו רבו בשביל משכב זכור נמליכהו עלינו. בא גבריאל ופרעו.

When Pharaoh said [to Joseph] (Gen 41:44) “no one will lift [their hands] without your say so,” Pharaoh’s astrologers said: “a slave taken by his master for homosexual congress is now going to lord it over us?” Gabriel came and emasculated him.

Michael L. Satlow, Tasting the Dish: Rabbinic Rhetorics of Sexuality, BJS (Atlanta: SBL, 1995), 207.

On the question as to whether men can be victims of sexual assault (from both men and women), see Siegmund Fred Fuchs, “Male Sexual Assault: Issues of Arousal and Consent,” Cleveland Law Review 51.1 (2004): 93–121.

Yet, in the Torah Temimah’s commentary on this talmudic passage, R. Baruch HaLevi Epstein (1860–1942) suggests that Potiphar’s wife tries to seduce Joseph not out of sexual frustration but because she wishes to conceive a child. He cites the midrash (Gen Rab 85:2; Rashi on Gen 39:1), which links the prior episode of Tamar and Judah (Gen 38) to the story of Joseph in Potiphar’s House (Gen 39). Like Tamar, Mrs. Potiphar wants to lie with Joseph to conceive—for she had seen, by way of the astrologers, that she would bear a son through Joseph but did not know whether it would be through her or her daughter Asenath. (Since the midrash assumes that Potiphar is the same as Poti-phera, father to Asenath, Potiphar’s wife would have been Asenath’s mother, a kind of Mrs. Robinson figure [as in the 1968 film “The Graduate”]).

See the discussion of this source in Lori Hope Lefkovitz, In Scripture—The First Stories of Jewish Sexual Identities (Plymouth, United Kingdom: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010), 88–91; and Kugel, In Potiphar’s House, 77–78. Compare this to how his behavior while in his father’s house is described in midrash: Tanḥuma VaYeshev 8, paraphrased by Rashi on Genesis 39:6. See also the comment on Genesis 37:2:

 ^{בראשית רבה פד (תיאודור-אלבק)} יוֹסֵף בֶּן שְׁבַע עֶשְׂרֵה שָׁנָה וגו' (בראשית לז, ב), וְאַתְּ אָמַר וְהוּא נַעַר, אֶלָּא שֶׁהָיָה עוֹשֶׂה מַעֲשֵׂה נַעֲרוּת, מְמַשְׁמֵשׁ בְּעֵינָיו, מְתַלֶּה בַּעֲקֵבוֹ, מְתַקֵּן בְּשַׂעֲרוֹ....

^{Gen Rab 84:7} “Joseph being seventeen years old…[a lad with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah]”: He behaved like a young lad, fluttering his eyelashes (or using eyeliner), curling his hair, and lifting his heel….

See, for example, the rabbinic tradition in which Dinah is blamed for the rape by Shechem, based on the verse, “And Dinah, daughter of Leah whom she had borne to Jacob, went out to see the daughters of the land” (Gen 34:1). Going out to the market place (that is, in public) is the male prerogative and when a woman does so, she “invites” calamity upon herself (Gen Rab 8:12, 79:8, 80:1). In this misogynist reading, Dinah is likened to her mother, Leah, who went out “as a harlot” to meet Jacob (Gen 30:16). See the discussion in Lefkovitz, In Scripture, 96.

The assumption is that a man cannot be the victim of sexual assault because he retains power—the physical ability to refuse—even when enslaved and ethnically “othered”; the woman is dependent on his consent, even when she is the Egyptian master.

See Michael Satlow, “‘Try to be a Man’: The Rabbinic Construction of Masculinity,” HTR 89 (1996): 19–40; Daniel Boyarin, Unheroic Conduct—The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 9–12. See also the discussion in Joshua Levinson, “An-Other Woman: Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife. Staging the Body Politic,” in JQR 3/4 (1997): 269–301.

Oddly, Potiphar is also not named beyond the opening verse (Gen 39:1; cf. 37:36), repeatedly referred to as “the master” of Joseph; the term אָדוֹן (ʾadon), “master,” figures as a leitwort (lead word) in this chapter seven times: five to refer to Potiphar (vv. 2, 3, 8, 16, and 20), and twice to the wife (ʾeshet ʾadonav) in vv. 7, 8.

See the discussion of the expression “the bread that he ate” as euphemism for the “wife,” in Kugel’s In Potiphar’s House, 74–75. Rashi on Genesis 39:6 makes the allusion explicit (cf. Gen Rab 86:6):

כי אם הלחם – היא אשתו, אלא שדברה בלשון נקייה.

Save The Bread—this means his wife, but Scripture uses here a euphemism.

The Masoretes added musical signs, known as tropes or teʾamim, to the Hebrew text to provide guidance regarding its pronunciation, syntax, and interpretation. The shalshelet musically marks ambivalence or angst and trepidation, as in the shalshelet over the verb marking Lot’s delay in leaving Sodom in Genesis 19:16 and the servant of Abraham’s set up of a test for the bride of Isaac in Genesis 24. In the words of Ismar Schorsch, the trope suggests “that Joseph’s resolve came only after inner struggle” (“The Meaning of the Shalshelet,” The Jewish Theological Seminary, accessed 7 December 2022). Editor’s note: For a brief discussion of the Masoretic elements in the Hebrew text, see Emanuel Tov, “The Bible and the Masoretic Text,” TheTorah (2017).

Rabbinic tradition identifies Joseph as “the faithful one [neʾeman].” See the midrashic tradition on Serah bat Asher, who connects the “faithful to the faithful,” that is Joseph to Moses (Gen Rab 94:9, and Pesiqta deRav Kahana, Beshallaḥ 11.13, Tanḥuma Va-Yeshev 5. The epithet, “faithful” is based on an attribute associated with Moses “He [the prophet] is trusted throughout My household” (Num 12:7). Joseph may also be identified as neʾeman because he was wholly trusted and “keeper of the keys” in Potiphar’s house and in the prison (Gen 39:4, 21–22). Early Jewish texts similarly downplay his femininity and emphasize, rather, his sagacity, forbearance, and self-restraint. In these sources, his piety is augmented (Philo, On Joseph 9:40–10:53; Josephus Ant. II, 4:1–5; and, in The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs: T.Reuben 4.8–9; T.Simeon 4.4–5; 5.1–3; T.Joseph 2.1–9.5 and T.Benjamin 4.9). As James Kugel has observed, in these sources “his behavior in the face of temptation is exemplary—so much so that one might even say he was not tempted!” (In Potiphar’s House, 23). For a review of the Second Temple literature, see Maren Niehoff, The Figure of Joseph in Post-Biblical Jewish Literature (Leiden: Brill, 1992).

Day after day he thwarts her advances, and so tradition has also granted him the epithet “the Righteous” or “Pious” one: Yosef ha-Tzaddiq. See James Kugel, In Potiphar’s House, 26; Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, vol. 5 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society 1925), 325.

Kugel similarly comments on Genesis 39:12, but with a significantly different read: “By using the term beged (rather than, say, simlah, used in connection with Joseph in Gen 41:14), Scripture wished further to imply something about Joseph’s own attitude at this crucial moment with Mrs. Potiphar. She seized him not by his ‘garment’ but ‘in his faithlessness’….” (In Potiphar’s House, 98).

The term “Hebrew” (ʿivri) is used to identify the Israelite (or proto-Israelite) as alien with respect to the people indigenous to a land, for they originally “lived beyond the [Euphrates] River [be-ʿever ha-nahar]” (Josh 24:2). For example, Abram is an ʿivri with respect to the Canaanites in Genesis 14:13; the Israelites are identified as Hebrews from the perspective of the Egyptians in Exodus 1:15, 16, 19; 2:7 and 11; Jonah identifies himself as ʿivri to the sailors in Jonah 1:9; and Joseph is identified as an ʿivri by Potiphar’s wife (Gen 39:14, 17) and by the cup-bearer (41:12). From the perspective of the “natives,” the term ʿivri seems to have a strong negative valence. In Ancient Near Eastern sources, the term has been associated with the Ḫapiru/Ḫabiru, who are either a social caste of unruly people or a semi-nomadic ethnic group (perhaps, in terms of the biblical Table of Nations, descendants of Eber, Gen 10:21, 24–25, 11:14–17). See the now classic article by Moshe Greenberg, The Hab/piru (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1955), and John Bright, A History of Israel, 3^rd ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1981), 92–95.  On ʿivri and the debate over identifying the Ḫapiru with the Hebrews, see also Yitzhaq Feder, “Don’t Call Me Hebrew! The Mysterious Origins of the First Anti-Semitic Slur,” TheTorah (2015).

The verb צ.ח.ק, “to mock, dally, play, or laugh,” has strong sexual overtones (as in Gen 26:8), and thus becomes the basis for the midrashic motif, “The Assembly of Ladies,” where many women are besotted by Joseph’s beauty. See the discussion in Kugel, In Potiphar’s House, 28–65. This motif is highly developed in the Qur’an, Sura 12. For the Islamic reception of the story, see Shalom Goldman, The Wiles of Women/The Wiles of Men: Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife in Ancient Near Eastern, Jewish, and Islamic Folklore (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1995). Editor’s note: On the root צ.ח.ק, see also Lisbeth S. Fried, “Does Ishmael Molest Isaac?” TheTorah (2021).

That is his work, not his master’s work. The translation here is based on Levinson, “An-other Woman,” 278–279, according to MSS Oxford 2675.2, Vatican 110, Munich 95, Aggadot Ha-Talmud. It is a reworking of the Palestinian tradition in Genesis Rabbah 87:7  and y. Horayot 2.4, 46d.

In the parallel midrash it is the Festival of the Nile or, in another opinion, “a day of Theater and everyone went to watch” (Gen Rab 87:7).

Levinson, “An-other Woman,” 293. Levinson focuses on the narrative expansion of the story in rabbinic literature as imbedded within Greco-Roman historical/cultural context. Because his interest lies in reading the sexual scene in terms of a trial of cultural continence, the comparison between the Hellenistic genre and rabbinic aggadah is germane to his argument. But the antecedents to the “seduction plot,” in midrash, lie in the biblical text. In fact, it is a near universal motif of folklore. Stith Thompson has described the motif as: “A woman makes vain overtures to a man and then accuses him of attempting to force her” (Stith Thompson, Motif Index of Folk Literature, 6 vols. [Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1955–1958], Motif K 2111).

This line appears in MS Oxford 2675, as well as (with slight variations) in Cambridge T-S C 2.23+. It is absent in the printed editions and the other manuscripts. Levinson points out: “This daring innovation seems to be based in the fact that Potiphar’s wife holds Joseph’s garment, or alternatively, on a word play whereby ‘his garment’ (bigdo) can be read as ‘his betrayal’ (bagdo)” (“An-other Woman,” 278, n. 31).

Levinson notes: “Most interpreters (Cassuto, Noth, Childs) see [the ʾephod] as a garment similar to a loincloth with a double shoulder strap held in place by two stones, one on each shoulder, upon which were engraved the names of the twelve tribes (Exod. 28:6–12)” (“An-other Woman,” 279, n. 37).

Hamlet, Act III, Scene IV.

Joseph’s face is the spitting image of his father’s, according to midrash (Gen Rab 84:8), playfully rereading the phrase, “son of his old age [ben zequnim]” in Genesis 37:3, as “ziv ʾiqonin” (lit. “splendor of countenance”). The term ʾiqonin is a Greek loan word (like the English, “icon”), from eikonion meaning “countenance” (Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumin, 60). According to R. Samuel bar Nahman, in Genesis Rabbah 87:7, he sees the image of his father and “did not find himself to be a man” (playing on the expression in “there was no man” in the house (Gen 39:11). That is, he experiences temporary impotence; his bow returned to its natural state (Gen 49:24). See Kugel’s analysis of this motif of “the image [ʾiqon] or coutenance of the father,” In Potiphar’s House, 69–71 and 106–112.

‏^{בראשׁית מט:כד} וַתֵּשֶׁב בְּאֵיתָן קַשְׁתּוֹ וַיָּפֹזּוּ זְרֹעֵי יָדָיו מִידֵי אֲבִיר יַעֲקֹב מִשָּׁם רֹעֶה אֶבֶן יִשְׂרָאֵל.

^{Gen 49:24} Yet his bow remained taut; his arms were made firm by the hands of the Mighty One of Jacob (from there is the Shepherd, the stone of Israel).

As Levinson points out, this is based on Exodus 14:27, where the sea returns to its previous condition:וַיָּשָׁב הַיָּם לִפְנוֹת בֹּקֶר לְאֵיתָנוֹ, “And the Sea returned to its natural state/flow.”

‏^{בבלי סוטה לו} מידי אביר יעקב מי גרם לו שיחקק על אבני אפוד אלא אביר יעקב משם רועה אבן ישראל משם זכה ונעשה רועה שנאמר רועה ישראל האזינה נוהג כצאן יוסף.

1. ^{Sotah 36b} “By the hands of the Mighty One of Jacob” (ibid. v. 24). Who caused his name to be inscribed upon the stones of the breastplate? None other than “the Mighty One of Jacob, from there, the Shepherd, the Rock of Israel” (ibid. v. 24), from there was he worthy to be called a “shepherd of Israel,” as it says: “Give ear, Oh Shepherd of Israel who leads Joseph like a flock” (Ps 80:2).

“It would almost seem that Jacob is offering himself as a surrogate object of desire” (Levinson, “An-other Woman,” 280).

Levinson “An-other Woman,” 297.

Perhaps the term “homotopia”is more appropriate here (Daniel Boyarin, “Homotopia: The Feminized Jewish Male and the Lives of Women in Late Antiquity,” Differences 7.2 [1995]: 41–81).