Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife

39Now Joseph was taken down to Egypt, and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard, an Egyptian, bought him from the Ishmaelites who had brought him down there.²The Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man; he was in the house of his Egyptian master.³His master saw that the Lord was with him, and that the Lord caused all that he did to prosper in his hands.⁴So Joseph found favour in his sight and attended him; he made him overseer of his house and put him in charge of all that he had.⁵From the time that he made him overseer in his house and over all that he had, the Lord blessed the Egyptian’s house for Joseph’s sake; the blessing of the Lord was on all that he had, in house and field.⁶So he left all that he had in Joseph’s charge; and, with him there, he had no concern for anything but the food that he ate.

Now Joseph was handsome and good-looking.⁷And after a time his master’s wife cast her eyes on Joseph and said, ‘Lie with me.’⁸But he refused and said to his master’s wife, ‘Look, with me here, my master has no concern about anything in the house, and he has put everything that he has in my hand.⁹He is not greater in this house than I am, nor has he kept back anything from me except yourself, because you are his wife. How then could I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?’¹⁰And although she spoke to Joseph day after day, he would not consent to lie beside her or to be with her.¹¹One day, however, when he went into the house to do his work, and while no one else was in the house,¹²she caught hold of his garment, saying, ‘Lie with me!’ But he left his garment in her hand, and fled and ran outside.¹³When she saw that he had left his garment in her hand and had fled outside,¹⁴she called out to the members of her household and said to them, ‘See, my husband^* has brought among us a Hebrew to insult us! He came in to me to lie with me, and I cried out with a loud voice;¹⁵and when he heard me raise my voice and cry out, he left his garment beside me, and fled outside.’¹⁶Then she kept his garment by her until his master came home,¹⁷and she told him the same story, saying, ‘The Hebrew servant, whom you have brought among us, came in to me to insult me;¹⁸but as soon as I raised my voice and cried out, he left his garment beside me, and fled outside.’

19 When his master heard the words that his wife spoke to him, saying, ‘This is the way your servant treated me’, he became enraged.²⁰And Joseph’s master took him and put him into the prison, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined; he remained there in prison.²¹But the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love; he gave him favour in the sight of the chief jailer.²²The chief jailer committed to Joseph’s care all the prisoners who were in the prison, and whatever was done there, he was the one who did it.²³The chief jailer paid no heed to anything that was in Joseph’s care, because the Lord was with him; and whatever he did, the Lord made it prosper.

Mark is a master storyteller whose perceptions often confound our expectation. We expect Jesus to heal when the sick person has faith in him. Here Jesus notes the faith of the man’s friends through their physical assault on his house (it may be Jesus’ own property). Jesus creates a “house of God” and the paralysed man’s friends break into it, as if God’s goodnesss is physically located there. (Jesus describes his own healings as breaking into the devil’s house. This is the opposite: faithful people taking God’s house by storm) Faith is not simply a personal possession. It is a shared longing to “see the goodness of God in the land of the living.” The sick man has been taught to associate his illness with punishment for his sins so Jesus declares God’s forgiveness. Challenged about his right to do this, he shows that he has dared to ransack God’s house for his best gifts so that he can offer them to people, as he does when he commands the paralysed man to walk. The images of God’s house (Greek oikos) implicit in this story are unexpected, disturbing, and exciting.