When Joseph flees, leaving his garment in her hand (Genesis 39:12), Potiphar's wife does not sit in silence. The Targum reports her pivot: she called the men of the house and said, See this, which the Hebrew man hath done whom your master hath brought to mock us. He came in to lie with me, and I cried with a high voice (Genesis 39:14).
Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the three weapons in her speech. First, the Hebrew man — she names him by his ethnicity, not by his role as steward, because a foreigner is easier to convict. Second, whom your master hath brought to mock us — she turns the blame back on her own husband for bringing a Hebrew into the house at all, binding the servants to her by making them victims of Potiphar's judgment. Third, I cried with a high voice — she pre-empts any challenge to her story by insisting she did the thing an innocent woman would do.
The Sages read this speech as a study in the anatomy of a false accusation. Bereshit Rabbah 87 notes that she tells the story to the servants first, not to her husband. Why? Because when Potiphar arrives she needs a chorus ready to nod. The manipulator arranges witnesses before the verdict is even asked.
The Targum, redacted in Eretz Yisrael in the early common era, preserves another bitter detail. Joseph's very virtue is what she uses to convict him. He fled because he would not sin. She turns the flight into evidence of the sin. The midrash teaches that the righteous are often framed not by their failures but by the precise shape of their refusals. The space where Joseph's integrity stood is exactly the space into which she pours her lie.
The lesson is old and still useful. Good behavior does not guarantee good reputation, and the honest person is often the one with the least footing when someone powerful decides to rewrite the story. Joseph will lose the case he should win. The Targum wants us to notice: he loses it because he was innocent. That is the whole point.