Chapter XXXIX · Joseph is cast into Prison (Yahwist).

Joseph is sold by the Ishmaelites (37^{28. 36}) to an Egyptian householder, who finds him so capable and successful that ere long he entrusts him with the whole administration of his estate (^1‒6). But his master’s wife conceives a guilty passion for him, and when her advances are repelled, falsely accuses him of attempted outrage, with the result that he is thrown into prison (^7‒20). Here again he wins the favour of his superior, and is soon charged with the oversight of the prison (^21‒23).

Source.—With the exception of a harmonising gloss in ^1bα, and a sprinkling of Elohist variants (discussed in the notes), the whole passage is from Yahwist. It represents the chief divergence between the two recensions of the history of Joseph. In Yahwist, Joseph is first sold to a private Egyptian איש מצרי, verse ¹), then cast into the state prison in the way here narrated, where he gains the confidence of the (unnamed) governor, so that when the butler and baker are sent thither they naturally fall under his charge. In Elohist, Joseph is sold at once to Potiphar (37³⁶), the palace officer in whose house the butler and baker are afterwards confined (40^3a); and Joseph, without being himself a prisoner, is told off to wait on these eminent persons (40⁴). The imprisonment, therefore, is indispensable in Yahwist, and at least embarrassing in Elohist.—This conclusion is partly confirmed by the literary phenomena: יהוה, ^{2. 3. 5}; the Ishmaelites, ¹; הוריד, ¹; הצליח, ^{3. 23}; מצא חן, ⁴; בגלל, ⁵. It is somewhat disconcerting to find that none of these occur in the central section, ^7‒20; and (Wellhausen, Die Composition des Hexateuchs und der historischen Bücher des Alten Testaments² 56) positively assigns ^6‒19 to Elohist, because of the phrases יפה תאר ויפה מראה, ^6b (compare 29¹⁷); ויהי א׳ הדברים ה׳, ⁷ (compare 15¹ 22^{1. 20} 40¹ 48¹); ראו, ¹⁴; and לאלהים, ⁹. These are not decisive (see Dillmann, 403; Holzinger, 231), and on the whole the material argument must be held to outweigh the dubious linguistic evidence that can be adduced on the other side.—Procksch (42 f.) assigns ^7‒10 to Elohist and ^11‒23 to Yahwist; but nothing is gained by the division.

1‒6. Joseph becomes the controller of an Egyptian estate.—1. But Joseph had been taken down, etc.] while his father was mourning over him as one dead (37^{31 ff.}); the notice resumes 37^28a.—a certain Egyptian] who is nameless in Yahwist (v.i.).—2. The secret of Joseph’s success: a combination of ability with personal charm which marked him out as a favourite of Yahwe (compare ^{3. 5. 21. 23}).—remained in the house, etc.] under his master’s observation, instead of being sent to work in the field.—4a. served him] i.e., ‘became his personal attendant.’—The phrase is a variant from Elohist (compare 40⁴).—4b. In Yahwist, Joseph’s position is far higher, that, namely, of mer-per (mer-pa, mer en peri-t, etc.), or superintendent of the household, frequently mentioned in the inscriptions (Ebers, Ägypten und die Bücher Moses 303 ff.; Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, 187 f.).—6a. knew not with him] (i.e. with Joseph [verse ⁸]): ‘held no reckoning with him’;—a hyperbolical expression for absolute confidence.—6b is introductory to ^{7 ff.}.

1. The words פוטיפר—הטבחים are a repetition by Redactor^Jehovist from 37³⁶ (Elohist), in order to harmonise the two sources. But the contradiction appears (1) in the meaningless איש מצרי after the specific designation (this is not to be got rid of by Ebers’s observation that under a Hyksos dynasty a high official was not necessarily a native Egyptian), and (2) the improbability of a eunuch being married (though cases of this kind are known [Ebers, 299]).—פוטיפר] LXX Πετεφρη[ς], an exact transcription of Egyptian Pedephrē = ‘He whom the sun-god gives’ (see A Dictionary of the Bible, i. 665b; Encyclopædia Biblica, 3814); but the long o of the Hebrew has not been explained. Compare Heyes, 105‒112.—סריס] means ‘eunuch’ in New Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, (as is shown by the denominative verbs = ‘be impotent’), and there is no case in Old Testament where the strict sense is inapplicable (Gesenius, Thesaurus philologicus criticus Linguæ Hebrææ et Chaldææ Veteris Testamenti 973 b). That such a word should be extended to mean ‘courtier’ in general is more intelligible than the reverse process (so Heyes, 122), in spite of the opinion of several Assyriologists who derive it from ša rêši = ‘he who is the head’ (Zimmern, Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, liii. 116; Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament³, 649).—שר הטבחים] LXX ἀρχιμάγειρος, a title like שר המשקים and ש׳ האופים in chapter 40 (Elohist). Compare רב הט׳, 2 Kings 25^{8 ff.}, Jeremiah 39^{9 ff.} 40^{1 ff.} etc., Daniel 2¹⁴. The טבחים were apparently the royal cooks or butchers (1 Samuel 9^{23 f.}), who had come to be the bodyguard (Smith, The Old Testament in the Jewish Church², 262¹).—2. איש מצליח] The intransitive Hiphil is thought by Dillmann, Gunkel, al. to be inconsistent with Yahwist’s usage (verses ^{3. 23} 24²¹); therefore Elohist.—4. בעיניּו] The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch, LXX, Vulgate בעיני אדניו.—וכל־יש־לו] The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch inserts אשר as verse ^{5 bis 8}.—4a is wholly assigned to Elohist by Gunkel; but וימצא חן pleads strongly for Yahwist.

7‒20. Joseph tempted by his master’s wife.—7‒10. The first temptation. The solicitation of a young man by a married woman is a frequent theme of warning in Proverbs 1‒9.—9a. אֵינֶנּוּ does not mean ‘there is none’ (which would require אֵין), but ‘he is not.’—9b. sin against God] The name Yahwe is naturally avoided in conversation with a foreigner. All the more striking is the consciousness of the divine presence which to the exiled Israelite is the ultimate sanction of morality.—11, 12. The final temptation.—On the freedom of social intercourse between the sexes, see Ebers, 306 f. But the difficulties raised about Joseph’s access to the harem do not really arise, when we remember that Yahwist is depicting the life of a simple Egyptian family, and not that of a high palace official (see Tuch).—13‒20. The woman’s revenge.—14. A covert appeal to the jealousy of the men-servants against the hated Hebrew, and to the fears of the women, whom she represents as unsafe from insult (to mock us). An additional touch of venom lurks in the contemptuous reference to her husband as ‘he.’—Hebrew may be here a general designation of the Asiatic Bedouin (Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients², 387); but see on 40¹⁵.—19. Her distorted account of the facts has the desired effect on her husband.—his wrath was kindled] against Joseph, of course. There is no hint that he suspected his wife, and was angry with her also (Delitzsch, Dillmann).—20. Imprisonment would certainly not be the usual punishment for such a crime as Joseph was believed to have committed; but the sequel demanded it, Joseph’s further career depending on his being lodged in the place where the king’s prisoners were bound. That he became a king’s slave (according to Ḥammurabi § 129) is not indicated (against Jeremias Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients², 388). The term for prison (v.i.) is peculiar, and recurs only ^{21. 22. 23} 40^{3. 5}.

To this episode in Joseph’s life there is an Egyptian parallel so close that we can hardly fail to recognise in it the original of the Hebrew story. It is the ‘Tale of the two brothers’ in the d’Orbiney Papyrus, assigned by Egyptologists to the 19th dynasty. Two brothers lived together, the older Anpu having a house and wife, and the younger Batu serving him in the field. One day Batu enters the house to fetch seed for the sowing, and is tempted by his brother’s wife, exactly as Joseph was by his mistress. Furiously indignant—“like a panther for rage”—he rejects her advances, out of loyalty to the brother who has been like a father to him, and expresses horror of the ‘great sin’ which she had suggested. Promising silence, he returns to his brother in the field. In the evening Anpu comes home to find his wife covered with self-inflicted wounds, and listens to a tale which is a perfect parallel to the false accusation against Joseph. Anpu seeks to murder his brother; but being at last convinced of his innocence, he slays his wife instead. Here the human interest of the story ceases, the remainder being fairy lore of the most fantastic description, containing at least a reminiscence of the Osiris myth. (See Ebers, 311 ff.; Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, 378 ff.; Petrie, Egyptian Tales Translated from the Papyri, ii. 36 ff.; Völter, Aegypten und die Bibel, 50 f. [who takes the story as a whole to be founded on the myth of Set and Osiris].) It is true that the theme is not exclusively Egyptian (see the numerous parallels in Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion, ii. 303 ff.); but the fact that the scene of the biblical narrative is in Egypt, and the close resemblance to the Egyptian tale, make it extremely probable that there is a direct connexion between them.

8. מה] The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch מאומה (verse ²³).—בבית] The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch, LXX, Peshiṭtå, Vulgate בביתו.—10. לשכב אצלה and להיות עמה look like variants; but one swallow does not make a summer, and it would be rash to infer an Elohistic recension.—11. כהיום הזה] A very obscure expression, see Brown-Driver-Briggs, 400 b. Of the other occurrences (Deuteronomy 6²⁴, Jeremiah 44²², Ezra 9^{7. 15}, Nehemiah 9¹⁰†) all except the last are perfectly transparent: ‘as [it is] this day,’—a sense quite unsuitable here. One must suspect that the phrase, like the kindred כַּיּוֹם and כַּיּוֹם הַזֶּה (compare especially 1 Samuel 22^{8. 13}), had acquired some elusive idiomatic meaning which we cannot recover. Neither ‘on a certain day’ (Gesenius-Kautzsch § 126 s) nor ‘on this particular day’ (Brown-Driver-Briggs) can be easily justified.—13. וינס] MSS, The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch, LXX + ויצא (^{12. 15}).—14. לצַֽחֶק בנו] see on 26⁸.—15. אצלי] The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch, Peshiṭtå, Vulgate (pallium quod tenebam) read בידי,—wrongly, since to have said this would have been to betray herself (Delitzsch, Dillmann).—17 end] LXX + καὶ εἶπέν μοι Κοιμηθήσομαι μετὰ σοῦ [LXXᴬ Κοιμήθητι μετ’ ἐμοῦ].—18. ויהי כהרימי] LXX ὡς δὲ ἤκουσεν ὅτι ὕψωσα.—וינס] LXX, Peshiṭtå + ויצא.—20. בית הסהר] Only in ^20‒23 40^{3. 5} (Yahwist). The name may be Egyptian (see Ebers, 317 ff.; Driver A Dictionary of the Bible, ii. 768 a, n.), but has not been satisfactorily explained.—מְקום אשר] Gesenius-Kautzsch § 130 c.—אסורי] so The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch (and also in verse ²²); but read with Qrê אסירי (²²).

21‒23. Joseph in prison.—His good fortune and consequent promotion are described in terms nearly identical with those of verses ^1‒6.—In Yahwist, the governor of the prison is anonymous, and Joseph is made superintendent of the other prisoners.

21. ויתן חנו] (as Exodus 3²¹ 11³ 12³⁶†) genitive of object = ‘favour towards him.’—22. עֹשֵׁים] On omission of subject, see Gesenius-Kautzsch § 116 s.—הוא היה עשה] LXX^{A, al.} omitted.—23. בידו] LXX πάντα γὰρ ἦν διὰ χειρὸς Ἰωσηφ.—מצליח] LXX + ἐν ταῖς χερσὶν αὐτοῦ.