The story of Potiphar’s wife is all wrapped up with the story of a foreign teenaged boy whose jealous brothers had stripped him, thrown him into a pit, and eventually chose to sell him into slavery rather than murder him. After marching naked and in shackles for endless miles to Egypt, not knowing their language or customs, this bedraggled seventeen-year-old ended up in her household as one of her husband’s forced laborers.
The story of Potiphar’s wife:
I Success of Joseph, Genesis 39:1-6
II Seduction by Potiphar’s Wife, Genesis 39:7-20
III Salvation Received, Salvation Rejected, Genesis 39:21-23
Through her story we can learn that God’s blessing is the revelation of God’s goodness and God’s love. When we conduct ourselves honorably, our honorable deeds glorify God, and that will count far more than slander and false accusations.
And ultimately, when we find ourselves at the crossroad of temptation, the path of life and the path of death, the habits formed by daily faith, daily reverencing God and honoring others, will carry weight when we feel the tug in our hearts, when we find desire looks like life, and denial looks like death. By God’s grace, unlike the tragic figure of Potiphar’s wife, we can choose life.
Each video is designed to offer background scholarship on the topic, including setting, culture, original language, and archaeology, as well as a theological study. The “Broken, Searching, Trusted, Powerful” series is a companion to the book, available on Amazon, and published by Wipf and Stock.