Genesis 39:9, “[There is] none greater in this house than I; neither hath he kept back anything from me but thee, because thou [art] his wife: how then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?”
We have here the story we all heard many times and learned about in Sunday School. Joseph had become a trusted servant to Potiphar. He was about seventeen years old at this time and his master’s wife tried to seduce him. He resisted and said, “How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God” I was reading a commentary on this passage where a rabbi brought up an interesting question. Why did Joseph say I and not we? The rabbis answer caused me to dig a little deeper into this passage. He said that Joseph did not want to share anything with her, not even the pronoun we.
Note Joseph is speaking of a great wickedness and a sin against God. Is this not the same thing. Why does he just not say it is a sin against God. The word for sin is chatah which is an archer’s term for missing the target. What target is his missing?
Our English translations render the words ike ‘e’eseh hara’ah hagedolah as How can I do this great wickedness. The word ‘e’eseh is rendered as do but has the idea of doing as performing something. It is more than just an act, it is a performance or process. I believe that is why the adjective hagedolah (the great) is used. This word comes from the root word gadal which means to be great. It comes from an old Persian word which has the idea of entwining. Thus, this greatness is a greatness that comes from the process of entwining. It is like taking a ball of twine and continually adding more and more to it causing it to increase in size. The word for wickedness is ra’ah. This word is the same word used in Psalms 23:1 for shepherd. It is found in other places rendered as friend. This is a wickedness of a consuming passion.
In verse 11 we find that “And it came to pass about this time, that [Joseph] went into the house to do his business; and [there was] none of the men of the house there within.” It is interesting that the word for work is mala’kah. This word comes from the root word la’ak which means to labor but is also a play on the word mela’ which means to occupy or to distract. The Talmud in Sotah 36b says that this should be rendered as he went to satisfy his desires or to be distracted from his desires. In other words the kid was aroused by Pothipar’s wife’s seductive acts. He ran from the room because he was becoming gadal, entwined in the ra’ah consuming passion.
Pothipar’s wife had no desires to please God, she only wanted to please herself. Suppose Potiphar gave his permission to Joseph to be intimate with his wife? This would not be unheard of among the Hyksos who were a pretty barbaric race. If Joseph was such a prize servant, Potiphar might have rewarded Joseph in this way. But obviously this was one reward that Potiphar was holding back. The word for wife is simply ishah which means a woman. She could have been one of several wives that Potiphar had. Some scholars believe that Potiphar may have actually put his wife up to this as the ultimate test Joseph’s loyalty. Maybe it was more than that. The Talmud teaches that the name of God was continually on Joseph’s lips. Potiphar might have really been intrigued by this consuming passion that Joseph had for his God and he might have wanted to test it with another passion to see which one he would choose. We can only speculate.
No doubt there was a loyalty factor here and Joseph did not want to betray his master. But I think there was more to it than that. The very fact that he said he would miss the mark with God suggested that he would not entwine himself in this consuming passion and thus miss the mark, not be in the center of God’s will. He was becoming aroused and as he was he was becoming more and more aware of the fact that he was entwining himself in a consuming passion that was untwining him from God. It wasn’t that Joseph feared his master would find out about the affair, it was that the very presence of this arising passion was removing him from the presence of God and thus he ran out and began to occupy himself or distract himself for this passion.
The word la’ak also means to perform a religious work. He may have chosen to flee from the passion of the woman and renew his passion for God. God created a woman to be a gateway for man to God. The intimate relationship between a man and woman was never intended to be two fold but threefold. The husband, wife and God all sharing their loving passion with each other.
For me, the point of this whole story is that Joseph did not flee from this sin because he feared Potiphar, he fled because he feared the consequences from God. The consequences he feared was not being whipped by God or struck by a lightning bolt. It was the fear of losing his passion for the love of God. The intimate relationship between a man and woman is intended to increase one’s love for God, not distract from it.
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