Potiphar's Wife Lurked at Every Corner Asking for Joseph

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The Steward Who Thought He Had Arrived

Joseph locked the storeroom at the end of a good day and let himself feel it. Back in his father's house, whenever a fine portion came to the table, Jacob looked around for him and gave it to him, and his brothers sat and watched him eat it. Nobody watched him here. He held the keys, the accounts balanced, the master asked no questions.

"Now that I am here," he said, "I am grateful to You that I have relief."

Egyptians who bought slaves took them to an astrologer first, and the astrologer looked up and told the buyer the stars were good. Somebody had read a good portent over this one. Joseph had started to believe it.

Heaven Promised Him a She-Bear

The answer came back on the same breath as the thanks. "Carefree one. As you live, I am going to set the she-bear on you."

He tried a second thought, and it went worse than the first. His grandfather had been put through ordeals. His father had been put through ordeals. Was he really going to be handed a quiet career in a warm house?

"As you live," came the answer, "your ordeals will be greater than theirs."

The bear was already in the building.

She Asked Strangers If They Had Seen Him

In the street the mistress of the house was the modest wife of Pharaoh's officer, correct at the door, careful with her eyes. Inside, she dressed for one man and could not sit still. She muttered. She turned in circles. She went out again.

Her feet would not stay home. She was in the street, then in the squares, then lurking at a corner, stopping people she barely knew and asking them, "Have you seen Joseph?"

When she finally got both hands on him she did not bargain and she did not wrap it. She seized him, she kissed him, and she said four words. "Lie with me." Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachman said the wicked are accursed, and he meant the way it was said: no offer, no covering, nothing left to the man but the answer.

He answered by leaving. He fled the room and left his garment hanging in her fist.

The Chain Had a First Link

She had the cloak, so the household heard her account before it heard his, and by evening he was in the prison where the king's prisoners were kept.

The chain that put him there had a first link, and it was his own mouth. A boy among the naive. Discerning among the youths, and then the hard word: devoid of understanding. Is there anyone more devoid of understanding than a man who sets his own brothers against him? He had carried reports about them to their father. Out of that talk came the pit, and out of the pit came the caravan, and out of the caravan came a house with a woman in it, and out of the house came the cell.

Nothing in Egypt happened to him at random. It happened in order.

Judah Snared by His Own Mouth

Years later, ten men from Canaan faced the viceroy of Egypt in his own hall and did not know they were looking at their brother. A silver goblet had come out of the youngest one's sack. The viceroy wanted the boy for a slave and the rest of them on the road home.

Judah stepped forward, and he knew exactly where the trap had shut on him. He had stood in front of his father and said the words with his own mouth. "I will guarantee him. From my hand you can demand him. If I do not bring him back to you, I will have sinned against you forever" (Genesis 43:9). Flee three things, Rabbi Hanina used to say, and one of the three is standing surety between one man and another. Judah had run straight at it.

My son, if you have gone surety for your friend, if you have shaken your hand for a stranger, you are snared by the sayings of your own mouth. Do this and be delivered (Proverbs 6:1-3). The doing was one instruction. Go down. Cleave to the dust of the man's feet. Take his kingship and his lordship on yourself and say so out loud.

So Judah approached him. "Please, my lord, let your servant speak a word in my lord's ears, and do not be angry with your servant, for you are like Pharaoh" (Genesis 44:18). He went down to the floor at the feet of the brother he had sold, and offered his own body in the youngest one's place.

The man in the chair had been ruined once by his own mouth and had spent years in a cell thinking about it. He sat above his brother and watched a mouth do it again, and this time the words bought a boy back.