Genesis 39:1 “And Joseph was brought down to Egypt; and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, captain of the guard, an Egyptian, bought him of the hands of the Ishmeelites, which had brought him down thither.”

Hello readers, I hope you had a great week. It was officially the beginning of summer yesterday! We have had an unusual spring… it started sunny and warm and then got colder and wetter as we approached summer… but here’s hoping for some clear sunny days!

I was listening to a sermon about Joseph yesterday at work, and about his faithfulness in not sleeping with Potiphar’s wife. But the preacher made a good point in passing about Potiphar which I had never noticed before and thought worth blogging about.

If we have any level of familiarity with the Bible, we all know about Potiphar’s wife wanting to sleep with Joseph, and what a horrible woman she really was lying about him like she did. And we all revere Joseph’s moral integrity for refusing opportunity after opportunity for not lying with what would probably have been quite a good looking woman.

And Joseph probably could have justified it in his mind too. After all, he was a slave in Egypt, he’d been treated terribly by his brothers, God had seemingly let him down… so he could have justified himself this indulgence in pleasure with Potiphar’s wife. And the preacher made a pretty good point about Joseph something along the lines of “character isn’t proven in trial and testing, it is revealed”.

Well Joseph’s walk with God certainly was revealed when this temptation came up. And even though it cost him, he honoured God.

But I had never really thought about Potiphar’s role in it. Definitely not excusing his wife’s sin at all… but I realized that Potiphar was an important man. How many important people have marital issues! Seemingly every successful person, particularly in public spotlight, has the theme of infidelity in their personal life.

You can’t scroll through fb without seeing headlines about who’s with who now, who broke up from who, who cheated with who. And it seems like every celebrity or big name has all sorts of marital and relationship issues. And there’s a reason why, and probably the same reason Potiphar had.

Potiphar had a career. Yes we all need to work a job, make money, provide for a family. Absolutely. But the more I thought about it, after it was brought to my attention, I realized that his career was coming at the expense of his personal life, and his family.

After all, why did he buy a slave, who he then made run the whole household. Wasn’t that really Potiphar’s job? Was it really Joseph’s job to have all of Potiphar’s things in his hand. I mean, the Bible says “he knew not ought he had, save the bread which he did eat”. That’s pretty incredible when you think about it.

Joseph was running the house. Joseph was the overseer… but shouldn’t the husband be overseeing the things at home? But there’s a reason Potiphar made him the overseer… because Potiphar was overseeing different things. He had different priorities! As captain of the guard… he was overseeing the people under him in the army or military or whatever he was… but he wasn’t overseeing things at home.

There’s a great verse in Proverbs which I’ve always remembered “Be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks, and look well to thy herds.” Behind many failures at home is a failure in diligence to know what is yours to know, be it as a spiritual father or a physical father. And Potiphar was not diligent to know the state that his wife was in. While he was out busy in his career, she was clearly very dissatisfied at home. I personally doubt it was the first time her sexual desire wandered elsewhere.

No, I’m not excusing Potiphar’s wife, because there is no excuse, but Potiphar while he blamed Joseph in the end, really should have blamed himself or his wife. How often an innocent bears the cost of someone else’s sin… and this is no more pictured than at the cross where Jesus bore the sins of the world.

And there are other factors that feed into this. It was a tactical move by Potiphar to install Joseph as overseer… because Joseph was prosperous and Potiphar benefited from Joseph’s spirituality. And that’s a warning. How often we rely on other people’s spirituality rather than having our own. Potiphar might have been mighty in carnal matters, and mighty in the public eye… but he was very weak not only in personal life with his wife… but in a walk with God too. He really did neglect everything that was most important in his life.

When Joseph refused Potiphar’s wife he said this “Behold, my master wotteth not what is with me in the house, and he hath committed all that he hath to my hand;” … yeah Potiphar had dropped the ball long before his wife was making sexual advances on other men. Yes there’s a time and place for delegation, but Potiphar shouldn’t have delegated “all” into Joseph’s hand.

Really he’d even delegated many of his duties as a husband to Joseph, maybe without even realizing it. I mean, Potiphar’s wife was communicating with Joseph “day by day”. Far out! Why was she not communicating with Potiphar day by day? Because he wasn’t around? He wasn’t available to her? Maybe their relationship was already having problems, maybe they weren’t communicating. Breakdown of communication usually precedes infidelity.

Look, I’m no relationship expert, but I think there’s a lot more here than we think, and particularly relevant to married people. There are a lot of busy people in our society, busy with lots of things that ultimately have no value, while neglecting the most important things, such as walk with God and home life. You can’t delegate those things away… they’re not someone else’s responsibility! They are your own. Unbelievably we try delegating the most important things to other people, and Potiphar didn’t perhaps ever know it, because he threw Joseph in prison, but he was very fortunate Joseph was a truly godly man because Potiphar got treated very well by Joseph a lot more than he probably ever realized.

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