Genesis 39

Notes

1. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 18, 20

   הוּרַד is the hophal of יָרַד, the passive of the hiphil "bring down" (20), and the hiphil returns at the end of the verse, "who had brought him down." The verse resumes 37:36 after the Judah story, which opened with the qal of the same verb, "Judah went down" (38:1): one brother goes down of his own will, the other is brought down. Potiphar's titles are those of 37:36, "eunuch of Pharaoh, officer of the butchers" (see the notes there). The added "an Egyptian man" is the narrator's: an Egyptian buys him, in Egypt, and the word returns in vv. 2 and 5, "the Egyptian."

2. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 20, 10

   מַצְלִיחַ is the hiphil participle of צָלַח, "make prosper" (20), here with no object. The object the verb takes elsewhere is a way or a work (24:21, 40, 42, 56), and "things" is supplied for it, so the participle keeps the causative and does not become "a prosperous man" (KJV, RSV "successful"). The next verse names who makes them prosper: "all that he was doing, Adonai was making prosper in his hand," and v. 23 closes the chapter with it.

3. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "made him overseer over his house" (KJV) / "made him overseer of his house" (RSV)

   Rulings 2, 20, 123

   וַיַּפְקִדֵהוּ and הִפְקִיד (v. 5) are the hiphil of פָּקַד, whose home gloss "attend to" belongs to the qal (123b). Ruling 123(b) leaves "the hiphil 'appoint' when reached," and this is the first hiphil in the text: with עַל and a charge it is to set a person over something (41:34; Num 1:50; Jer 40:5, 7; 2 Kgs 25:22). "Appointed" is printed here and in v. 5 as a departure; the split by stem is not yet declared. The noun of the root, פָּקִיד "overseer," is the KJV's word here (41:34). Two different trusts run through the chapter: the master appoints Joseph and gives "all that there was to him" into his hand (vv. 4–6, 8); the officer of the round-house gives the prisoners into his hand (v. 22).

4. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 2, 37

   עָזַב is "forsake" (2, 3), and the home gloss is held through a chain the chapter builds on one phrase. The master "forsook all that was his in the hand of Joseph" (v. 6); Joseph "forsook his garment in her hand" (vv. 12–13). The man trusted with everything leaves the one thing in the hand that grasps him. "Leave" (KJV, RSV) would be the plain English with a thing as object, and the WPRB has it; the WPB keeps one verb so the reader hears the two hands. The woman then tells the scene twice with "beside me" for "in her hand" (vv. 15, 18; see the note there).

5. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 39, 74

   "Except the bread that he was eating" is the concrete word (39): the master attended to nothing but his meals. Genesis Rabbah 86:6, followed by Rashi, reads "bread" as a euphemism for his wife, citing v. 9, where Joseph says the master has withheld nothing "except you." Ibn Ezra takes it plainly: as an Egyptian he could not eat with a Hebrew (43:32), so his food was the one thing he kept in his own hands. אִתּוֹ "with him" is printed as the Hebrew has it: with Joseph there, he knew nothing. Joseph repeats the phrase of himself in v. 8, "my lord does not know, with me there, what is in the house."

6. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 2

   יְפֵה־תֹאַר וִיפֵה מַרְאֶה "beautiful of form and beautiful of sight" is the phrase used of his mother Rachel (29:17), and of no other man in the Torah. The description comes at the end of the verse that hands him the house, and the next verse begins the trouble.

7. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "sin against God" (KJV, RSV)

   Rulings 9, 38, 128, 129

   לֵאלֹהִים has no agreeing verb in its clause. Under 128(d) and 129(n), bare Elohim takes the capital where Adonai is named in the same scene: the chapter is one closed section (ס after v. 23), and its narrator names Adonai at vv. 2–3, 5, 21 and 23, the frame of this scene. So "Elohim," WPRB "God." Joseph does not name Adonai to the Egyptian woman; he uses the general word, as he does to Egyptians throughout (40:8; 41:16; 45:8). He speaks of three refusals: the master's trust (v. 8), his rank (v. 9a), and Elohim, and he calls the act "this great bad," the word the brothers will use of their own deed (50:15, 17, 20). The cupbearer and baker in 40:1 "sinned against their lord," with the same verb.

8. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 2

   אֵצֶל "beside" is a different word from the עִם "with" of her demand (vv. 7, 12, 14, "lie with me") and of the next clause, "to be with her." Genesis Rabbah 87:6 reads the two clauses as two degrees: he would not lie beside her in this world, to be with her in the world to come. אֵצֶל returns in vv. 15–18, where she uses it of the garment.

9. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 74

   כְּהַיּוֹם הַזֶּה is "about this day," the KJV's "about this time." It is the phrase that elsewhere means "as at this day" (50:20; Deut 2:30); here it opens a particular day. "To do his work": Genesis Rabbah 87:7 records a dispute between Rav and Shmuel, one taking it plainly, the other as a euphemism, that he came intending to yield and was stopped by the image of his father. Rashi records that the house was empty because it was a festival day. The Hebrew says only that no man of the house was there.

10. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 22

    הֵבִיא "he has brought" has no subject named. To the men of the house she does not call him "my man" or "your lord"; the pronoun keeps her distance from him and lays the blame on him. To him in v. 17 she says "you brought." The Hebrew slave becomes "a man, a Hebrew" to the household, which sets the household and her against an outsider: "to laugh at us."

11. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "to mock us" (KJV) / "to insult us" (RSV)

    Rulings 126, 17, 37

    The piel of צָחַק keeps "laugh" in every use (126a), so the chain on Isaac's name is heard: Sarah's laughter (18:12–15), Isaac's name (21:6), Ishmael "laughing" (21:9), Isaac "laughing" with Rebekah (26:8). The piel is sexual at 26:8 and mocking or playing elsewhere; here it holds both, which is her charge. With בְּ it is "laugh at" (Judg 16:25 has the piel of the cognate שָׂחַק with לִפְנֵי). In v. 14 he came "to laugh at us," the household; in v. 17, to her husband, "to laugh at me."

12. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 2, 74

    Her story changes the scene. The narrator said he forsook his garment "in her hand" and fled (vv. 12–13); she says he forsook it "beside me" (vv. 15, 18), and she "settled" it "beside her" (v. 16), on view, until his lord came. The narrator also had him flee before she called (vv. 13–14); her account puts her cry first and his flight after it, as the proof of her innocence. The law of Deut 22:24, 27 turns on whether a woman cried out.

13. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 39, 74

    "His nose flared" (חָרָה with אַף, concrete, 39). The text does not say at whom. Genesis Rabbah 87:9 and later readers notice that the master does not have Joseph killed, which a slave's assault on his master's wife would bring, but puts him in the king's prison, and they infer that he doubted her.

14. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "the prison" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 1, 25, 39

    סֹהַר occurs only in Gen 39:20–40:5, always in בֵּית הַסֹּהַר. Its likeliest root is סַהַר "round," "a round bowl" (Song 7:3), so a round building or tower, as in Egyptian fortified houses. The LXX has ὀχύρωμα "stronghold," the Vulgate carcer. The concrete word is kept (39), and "round-house" holds it in English, where a roundhouse was a lock-up from the seventeenth century on. The whole phrase בֵּית הַסֹּהַר is printed "the round-house," tagged on both words, since "the house of the round-house" doubles the noun. The WPRB has "prison." The building is in the house of the officer of the butchers (40:3), Potiphar's own.

15. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 19

    The qere אֲסִירֵי is "prisoners of"; the ketiv אסורי is the passive participle of אָסַר, "the bound ones of." The sense is the same, and the qere is printed (19). Either way the clause plays on one root: "where the prisoners of the king were bound."

16. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 2, 3

    נָטָה with חֶסֶד as its object is "stretched out loyalty," the verb of the stretched-out hand and arm (Exod 6:6); Ezra 7:28; 9:9 use the same idiom. "Gave his favor in the eyes of" is the idiom for making another regard him (Exod 3:21; 11:3; 12:36): "his favor" is favor toward Joseph, given by Adonai, in the eyes of the officer. The verse turns on the formula of v. 2: "And Adonai was with Joseph," and Joseph again "finds favor" (v. 4).

17. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 8, 74

    "In his hand" is Joseph's hand: the officer had given the prisoners "into the hand of Joseph" (v. 22), as the master had (vv. 4, 6, 8). The officer did not inspect what was in Joseph's charge. The closing clause repeats v. 3 almost word for word, so the chapter ends where Joseph's fortune began, in a new house.