Potiphar's Wife

	Women's Rights in Old Testament Times by James R. Baker Signature Books; Salt Lake City © 1992 by Signature Books. Table of Contents: Preface 1. Twelve Ancinet Legan Documents 2. The Law of the Keeper 3. Rachel's Household 4. Metronymic Marriage 5. Sarai/Sarah's Household 6. Rebekah's Household 7. Potiphar's Wife 8. David's Household 9. The Inheritance Rights of Wives 10. The Daughters of Zelophehad 11. Miscellaneous Cases Author

VII.

Potiphar's Wife

Potiphar's wife played a small role in a larger drama. Her lust for her husband's slave Joseph traumatized him but led to beneficial consequences not only for the son of Rachel but the Egyptian commonwealth.

In Canaan prior to their meeting, Joseph was sold into slavery for twenty pieces of silver an average price for a seventeen-year-old boy at the time (Gen. 37:28).¹ The intended sellers were his exasperated brothers who were angered by their father's preferential treatment of him. But he was apprehended by Midianites who sold him to a caravan of Ishmaelites en route to Egypt before his brothers did. The Midianites were not professional slave traders; none are known during this period—about 1600-1500 B.C.—in the ancient world.

In Egypt the Ishmaelites sold Joseph for an undisclosed sum into permanent servitude as a foreign slave to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh.² Joseph prospered in Potiphar's service and became overseer of all that Potiphar had (Gen. 37:36; 39:1-6).

Trusted, capable slaves at this time were allowed to hold responsible positions and to own property. Some engaged in business, owned slaves, cattle, and land, appeared as bankers, and borrowed large amounts of money.³ Potiphar trusted him so completely that he placed all he had in Joseph's hand, “and he {Potiphar} knew not aught he had, save the bread which he did eat” (Gen. 39:6). If ever a slave had expectations of a comfortable life, it was Joseph. His rise to leadership was spectacular, his fall from grace even more precipitous.

In addition to his managerial skills, Joseph was “goodly” and “well favoured” (Gen. 39:6). Potiphar's wife became infatuated with Joseph, but her sexual advances were refused (v. 7).

How could a slave refuse his mistress? First, of course, Potiphar's wife did not own Joseph. He had been bought by Potiphar, and just as Potiphar could not legally have sexual relations with a handmaid owned by his wife, neither could she have legal sexual relations with Joseph. The wife's rights to command Joseph were limited to some direction over his household responsibilities. Second, Joseph's language suggests that Potiphar may have specifically warned Joseph of this possibility, because Joseph said to her, “neither hath he {Potiphar} kept back any thing from me but thee, because thou art his wife” (Gen. 39:9).

Potiphar's wife was not dissuaded and continued to pursue Joseph. When he fled her grasp, he left his garment in her hand. She promptly “called unto the men of her house, and spake unto them saying, `He came in unto me to lie with me, and I cried with a loud voice: And . . . he left his garment with me, and fled'” (Gen. 39:14-15)

Although we have no specific information about Egyptian laws regarding seduction and rape, the other codes of the ancient world are reasonably uniform about married women. Since the action took place in her house, she had to resist and provide evidence of resistance. Otherwise she would be presumed guilty of misconduct.⁴ In this case Potiphar's wife had both Joseph's garment and her own rousing of the household as the necessary evidence.

To both her servants and later to Potiphar, she referred to Joseph as the “Hebrew” whom Potiphar had brought in “to mock us” (Gen. 39:14, 17), suggesting that she was playing on the natural jealousy of the other servants who had seen a newcomer rapidly assume a trusted position with Potiphar.

Confronted with the garment, witnesses who heard his wife scream, and his wife's anger, Potiphar's “wrath was kindled” (Gen. 39:19). He sent Joseph to prison.

Even with our limited understanding of Egyptian law, this seems like light punishment for attempted rape of the wife of a high-ranking official of the Egyptian government. An instructive Egyptian folk tale from the thirteenth century B.C., about two or three hundred years after Joseph's period, concerns two brothers, Anubis and Bata. Anubis was married, and Bata came to work for him on his farm. One day as they were out planting in the field, Anubis sent Bata to the house to get more seed. Not wishing to make more than one trip, Bata took a huge load. Anubis's wife admired his physical strength and suggested he spend an hour in bed with her. Appalled, Bata told her never to say such a thing again and he would not mention anything about it.

The unnamed angry wife ingested some fat and grease to make herself sick and to look as if she had been beaten. When her husband came home, she told him that Bata had propositioned her and that when she had refused he had beaten her so she would not tell. She asked him to kill Bata so that he would not try to rape her again. Anubis was enraged and waited in ambush at the shed for Bata. As Bata brought the cows into the shed, the animals warned him of Anubis's intent, and Bata was able to escape.

After a long chase Bata and Anubis talked at a distance. Bata convinced Anubis of his innocence, and Anubis after returning home slew his wife and threw her body to the dogs.⁵ If this story embodies any accepted Egyptian legal principle, death may have been the penalty for attempted rape.⁶ Perhaps Potiphar was less than convinced by his wife's evidence. In the biblical story, Joseph eventually rises to become chief minister of Egypt, but the wife of Potiphar is not heard from again.

Asenath

We know almost nothing about Asenath except that she was the daughter of Potipherah priest of On and that she bore Joseph at least two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. However, her marriage to Joseph tells us something of Joseph's status at the time, and her importance to Israel cannot be underestimated.

Prior to their meeting, Joseph had been three years in prison. However, he had been elevated to a position of administrative leadership over all the prisoners (Gen. 39:22). After interpreting dreams for two prisoners, Joseph was asked to interpret the dreams of Pharaoh. Pharaoh was so impressed by Joseph and his interpretations that he made him prime minister, second only to Pharaoh himself. Did this elevation free Joseph? Not in itself. But Joseph was given an Egyptian name, Zaphnathpaaneah (41:45), which was an act of naturalization⁷ and manumission,⁸ since a non-debtor Egyptian could not be enslaved in Egypt.

Even more compelling evidence that Joseph was naturalized is found in the story of his encounter with his brothers when they had come seeking additional food from Egypt. Joseph invited them to eat with him at his home (Gen. 43:25) but ate at a separate table “because the Egyptians might not eat bread with the Hebrews: for that is an abomination unto the Egyptians” (v. 32).

Additional evidence of his free status is his marriage to Asenath, daughter of Potipherah. Potipherah was no relation to Potiphar but a priest of the sun god On and member of the highest caste.⁹ Such marriages were not consummated with slaves. Asenath's husband was free by royal decree and a ruler in Egypt under Pharaoh.

Asenath bore Joseph at least two sons.¹⁰ Manasseh and Ephraim were adopted by Jacob on his deathbed and together given the firstborn birthright or double portion land inheritance that Jacob bestowed on their father.¹¹

Of Asenath's two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, Jacob said, addressing Joseph, “And now thy two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, which were born unto thee in the land of Egypt before I came unto thee into Egypt, are mine; as Reuben and Simeon, they shall be mine” (Gen. 48:5). Later, during the blessing that he pronounced on them, Jacob reiterated this new relationship: “God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God which fed me all my life long unto this day, the Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads; and let my name be named on them, and the name of my father Abraham and Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth” (vv. 15-16).

It is clear from these two passages that Jacob made an oral contract adopting Ephraim and Manasseh as his sons who would thereafter receive Joseph's land inheritance. Thus Asenath, an Egyptian, became a mother in Israel and the mother of the birthright sons.

Notes:

1. G. J. Wenham, “Leviticus 27:2-8 and the Price of Slaves,” Zeitschrift fur die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 90 (1978): 265; C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament in Ten Volumes (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1985), 1:337.

2. The Hebrew word for “officer” is saris meaning “eunuch.” The word is of Akkadian origin from a time when most key court officers were eunuchs, but there is no conclusive evidence that the Egyptian officers themselves were eunuchs. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, Jr., and B. K. Waltke, eds., Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (Chicago: Moody Press, 1980), 634-35.

3. Isaac Mendelsohn, Legal Aspects of Slavery in Babylonia, Assyria and Palestine (Williamsport, PA: Bayard Press, 1932), 57-61.

4. “If a man seizes a woman in the mountains, it is the man's crime and he will be killed. But if he seizes her in (her) house, it is the woman's crime and the woman shall be killed. If the husband finds them, he may kill them, there shall be no punishment for him.” Hittite Law 197, in E. Neufeld, The Hittite Laws (London: Luzac & Co. Ltd., 1951), 56; Middle Assyrian Law A 12, in G. R. Driver and J. C. Miles, The Assyrian Laws (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1935), 387; Code of Hammurabi 130, in G. R. Driver and J. C. Miles, eds., The Babylonian Laws, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 2:53; Deut. 22:23-24.

5. James B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, including Supplement, 1969), 23-25.

6. In Egypt adultery was known as “the great sin”; see E. A. Speiser, Oriental and Biblical Studies: Collected Writings of E. A. Speiser, eds. J. J. Finkelstein and Moshe Greenburg (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1967), 76. As in all ancient Near East jurisdictions, adultery was a capital crime. According to Keil and Delitzsch, Egyptian law punished attempted adultery by 1,000 blows with a rod and a severer penalty for rape of a free woman; see Commentary on the Old Testament, 1:345.

7. Commentary on the Old Testament, 1:352.

8. Mendelsohn, Legal Aspects of Slavery, 1932), 44.

9. Keil and Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament, 1:352.

10. Jacob adopts only these two, and any others Joseph might have were to belong to Joseph (Gen. 48:6).

11. No one knows what vision Jacob had of his descendants' future, but giving one tribe (Joseph) a double allotment of land may have increased jealousy among the other tribes. Perhaps this diffused the issue.