Sin and Its Tempation

We are studying the fourth and final major section in the book of Genesis which is about the “family history” of Jacob as seen through his twelve sons.

These last 14 chapters are largely one story, centered around Joseph: he is the favored son of Jacob (Is he God’s favorite, too?), but he is envied and hated by his brothers who sell him into slavery in Egypt and convince Jacob that Joseph is dead.

That opens the door for other sons to seek the favored status, last week we saw an episode from the life of Judah which has left us unsure of what his place will be. On the one hand, Judah has been convicted. On the other hand, God’s redemptive justice has seen that his family line continues through children born to Tamar.

This chapter resumes the Joseph story. We pick him up in Egypt, but the story that follows is also meant to contrast with the story we just read. Judah’s sexual failure sets up a contrast with Joseph’s sexual fidelity, but what is the point of the contrast?

It is easy to make these stories about sexual temptation alone, but the temptations of Judah (which he gives in to) and the temptations of Joseph (which he resists) must be seen in light of the larger story going on in Genesis. The various temptations that God’s people face must be resisted in order for God's purposes to be realized through their lives.

As we look at Genesis 39, we see Joseph portrayed as a successful man, a tempted man, and a humiliated man.

A Successful Man

First, the narrator shows us Joseph as a very successful man.  In spite of his brothers’ hostilities and plot against his life, things go quite well for Joseph who was “brought down to Egypt” and purchased by “Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard” (v. 1).

The Presence of the LORD

Now, right off the bat, the story tells us why things go well for Joseph. Verse 2 says, “The LORD was with Joseph, and he became a successful man.” This explicit statement about God’s presence with Joseph—God’s beneficent presence with Joseph—is mentioned four times in this chapter, but no where else in the Joseph story. The narrator wants us to understand that the reason for Joseph’s success was divine enablement.[1]God was on Joseph’s side.

And this, too, is part of the contrast with Judah’s story in the previous chapter. The specific name of Israel’s God (Yahweh) occurs twelve times in Genesis 37–50; eleven of them are in chapters 38–39. There is no theological ambiguity here. Every time Yahweh is mentioned in chapter 38 he is Judah’s antagonist; every time Yahweh is mentioned in chapter 39 he is Joseph’s agent of blessing. “Joseph is the foil to Judah.”[2]

The Blessing of the LORD

Verses 3-5 tell us more specifically what success in Joseph’s life looked like.

His master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord caused all that he did to succeed in his hands. So Joseph found favor in his sight and attended him, and he made him overseer of his house and put him in charge of all that he had. From 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. (Gen 39:3–5)

Every time Joseph was given a responsibility, he succeeded. It’s not just that he carried through with his responsibilities; it’s that everything he did, everything he touched, turned to gold. The narrator has made it clear that Joseph’s success was owing to divine enablement. At the same time, we shouldn’t minimize the credit that Joseph deserves for being faithful in his responsibilities. Yes, “the LORD caused all that he did to succeed,” verse 3 says, but the LORD brought this success “in his hands,” we are told. This is how it is supposed to work. God does his work, but he does it primarily through his people who are faithful in the work.

What we can see in these first six verses of the present chapter is God’s ideal not only for Joseph at this particular time; it is God’s ideal for all his people at all times. Verse 5 says that “the LORD blessed the Egyptians house for Joseph’s sake” and that “the blessing of the LORD was on all that he had, in house and field.” The blessing of the LORD. It couldn’t be much more explicit: this is what God said he would do in fulfillment of the covenant he made with Abraham. “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen 12:3). As Joseph has gone down Egypt, the Abrahamic blessing has gone there with him.

Opportunity for Impact

The result is that this Egyptian officer of Pharaoh “left all that he had in Joseph’s charge.” Joseph, because of divine enablement and blessing, and also because of his faithfulness and responsibility, is given more opportunity for impact within Potiphar’s house. “Potiphar abandoned his interest in what Joseph was doing because he was so convinced that Joseph was doing the best for him.”[3] He gladly put Joseph in charge of virtually everything.

I consider it a good thing when God’s people succeed in their work and are promoted and given more opportunities for impact in every area of life. We should celebrate when we see evidence of the beautiful combination of God’s blessing and Christian faithfulness that garners the attention and praise of the world. Such things are not incidental to the gospel story but right at the heart of what the story is all about.

So, although Joseph has suffered at the hands of his brothers, these first six verses tell us straightforwardly that Joseph, like Isaac and Jacob before him and because of God’s presence with him, is the carrier of the great Abrahamic hope.[4] Joseph is a successful man. And because of his success, all eyes are on him.

A Tempted Man

Including the eyes of Potipher’s wife. In the next few verses (vv. 7-12), we read about Joseph the tempted man as Potipher’s wife attempts to seduce him into committing adultery with her.

The Temptation of Indulgence

The narrator tells us, at the end of verse 6, that “Joseph was handsome in form and appearance.” Joseph had it all, including dashing good looks. The only other person in the Old Testament described as having a beautiful face and figure is Joseph’s mother, Rachel (Gen 29:17). Joseph had his mother’s good-looking genes.

But the reason the narrator has told us this is to set the stage for what happens next. He is signaling to us a warning, that although Joseph had such enviable God-given blessings entrusted to him, those blessings come with their own difficulties. Joseph suffers from having “one endowment too many.”[5]Soon enough, “his master’s wife cast her eyes on Joseph” (v. 7).

What follows is surely to be understood as a rather intense temptation toward sexual indulgence. Most of us, if we’re honest, know well the power of such temptation. But we should first understand this temptation within the context of the larger biblical story. Given his important place in carrying forward the Abrahamic promise and hope, we expect that this story is about much, much more than Joseph’s own experience with sexual temptation.

Off Limits

Notice a couple of interesting details the narrator gives us. He tells us in verse 6 that Potipher had put everything in Joseph’s charge, that because of Joseph, Potipher didn’t have to care about anything “but the food he ate.” Why was Potipher’s food the only thing Potipher had to care about? Why couldn’t Joseph handle that, too? Why was Potipher’s food “off limits” for Joseph?

Perhaps it’s because the narrator is using “food” here as a euphemism for Potipher’s wife. In verse 9, Joseph says that Potipher had not “kept back anything from me except” his wife. The portrayal is that Potipher allowed Joseph to do what he wanted with everything he had; only his “wife was excluded from Joseph’s indulgence.”[6]

Why does the narrator put it in these terms? He may well be wanting us to see this story in light of one we’ve seen before in Genesis. Joseph in Potipher’s house is something like Adam in the Garden of Eden.

Think about it: God entrusted everything into Adam’s hands, putting him in the midst of paradise, surrounded by “every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food” (Gen 2:9). The God of the Bible is not a miser. He is not chintzy or colorless, but extravagant and ecstatic. He gave this world of wonders to Adam. And God did not leave him there alone, but made for him a woman, a wife who was, let’s just say, a sight to behold. God did this for Adam. God made a sensuous world and put Adam in the middle of it and told him to enjoy himself. Adam could indulge himself in the food “of every tree of the garden” except for one.

Now, given such opportunity, what is a guy supposed to do?

We know what Adam did, don’t we? And we know what Judah did in the previous chapter. But here we are told that Joseph did not take the bait. He does not eat from the forbidden tree.

The result is not simply that Joseph has avoided sexual immorality, but that by his victory over this temptation he is portrayed as a new Adam, “unravelling the effects of the curse by exercising knowledge of good and evil appropriate for human creatures.”[7]Because Joseph wisely passes his test, salvation and flourishing are what we expect will flow from his life instead of the death and decay that came from Adam.

What Is on the Line?

Another interesting detail in the way the narrator tells us this story is the contrast between Potipher’s wife’s words meant to seduce Joseph and the response he utters to resist her.[8]The temptation is 2 words in Hebrew (v. 7); Joseph’s response in verses 8-9 runs on for 35 words. We can safely assume that Potipher’s wife said much more than this—verse 10 says “she spoke to Joseph day after day—but the brevity of her reported words over against the lengthiness of Joseph’s response is there to dramatize the great contrast between sin and its temptation over against what is on offer to those who are able to resist it. Seeing the contrast is one way to help us choose the right path to take.

Joseph’s explanation for why he could not give in to the temptation spotlights what all was on the line here. “How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” is what he concludes in verse 9, but notice what he says that leads to that conclusion. “Because of me,” he says, Potipher had nothing to worry about. With everything in his charge, Joseph himself had risen to the highest place possible and had been given access to virtually everything he could possibly want. What Joseph has obviously been rehearsing is how his life so far has been the source of divine blessing to him and also through him to Potiphar. An act of wickedness and sin against God would not be innocuous, nor would it simply be a matter of his own moral standing before a holy God. Because of who Joseph is, eating the forbidden fruit would have devastating effects not just on Joseph but also on those whom God intended to bless through Joseph. If you listen carefully, you can almost hear Potipher and all of Egypt begging Joseph not to give in—there’s too much to be lost.

Sexual immorality is of course the specific sin in view in this story, and for good reason. Like Joseph does in this story, the Apostle Paul urges Christians to “flee from sexual immorality,” (1 Cor 6:18) but what readers of the Bible often miss is the bigger picture of what is on the line. “The body is not meant for sexual immorality,” Paul explains. It is meant “for the Lord, and the Lord for the body” (1 Cor 6:13). The Christian sexual ethic takes its cue from the fact that God intends to accomplish his work of blessing and salvation and flourishing through our work as fully embodied physical creatures. God’s concern is not just the state of your soul or spirit but the state of your whole embodied self. That’s why the resurrection of the body is the central image of salvation in the gospel. “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?” (1 Cor 6:15).

It’s time that we Christians get back to the real reason for why what we do with our bodies matter. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Cor 6:19-20). Like Joseph, we who have been united to Christ have been united to him in order for his life to produce fruit in us (for our own enjoyment and benefit, yes) as well as through us (for the well-being and benefit of those around us also).

This is true not just for our sexual ethics but for all moral imperatives to which Christians must be committed.

A Humiliated Man

Mercifully, Joseph resisted the temptation. This is what we hoped would happen. But what we did not expect is what happens after that. Joseph becomes a humiliated man.

Falsely Accused

One day, when Potipher’s wife found Joseph alone with her in the house, she grabbed him by his garment. Joseph “left his garment in her hand and fled and got out of the house” (v. 12). Left with “his garment in her hand,” Potipher’s wife is able to lodge an accusation, a classic case of “she said, he said” in the absence of any witness to what had happened.[9]She first tells the rest of the household servants and then her husband a version of the story which it will be difficult for a foreigner like Joseph to contradict successfully. For the second time in his story, Joseph has been stripped of his garment and it becomes an artifact of deceit, evidence of something which is not true about him.

Samuel Emadi observes, “Adam goes from naked to clothed as a sign of his guilt (Gen 3:21), Joseph goes from clothed to naked (Gen 39:12) – a sign of his innocence for readers, though evidence of his guilt in the eyes of Potiphar.”[10] As a foreign slave, it is doubtful that Joseph had much recourse in this situation. His master hears the accusation, his anger is kindled, and he has Joseph thrown into prison.

The Innocent Sufferer

And so Joseph is humiliated. He has handled himself admirably and wisely, and just when we expect him to be rewarded for it, the opposite happens.[11]

This is something of a new twist in the story so far, the picture of the innocent sufferer, the one who is humiliated not for his sin but for the sin of others. It’s not supposed to happen this way. And yet, this is also the story Jesus himself lives out, when he is stripped of his garments and crucified like a criminal on Calvary’s cross.

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? (Isaiah 53:7–8)

Hope of Salvation

Now we know where this will all lead, because we have read the rest of Joseph’s story, and the rest of Jesus’s story, too. But perhaps we haven’t thought this through for ourselves, in our own day. How are we called to live as members of the family of God?

Are you tempted to sin? Whatever those temptations are, don’t forget who you are. It’s not that we are called merely to avoid bad things. God has a purpose, a blessing he wants to bring to you and through you for the world. That is why we should avoid sin.

Have you sinned? You feel the shame and the disgrace? The Apostle John says, “I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 Jn 2:1). Just as Joseph is cast down into another pit, his suffering is, if you will, a suffering on Potipher’s and his wife’s behalf. It is because he suffers that their lives are saved, spared from the deathly toll of a horrific famine.

Have you been faithful, avoiding various sins and its temptations, and yet feel like you haven’t gotten what you deserve? Don’t be afraid. Act like a Christian. Don’t be desperate.

The frantic rage we can often display in supposedly protecting Christian values might feel like strength, but the world sees it for what it is: fear, anxiety, and lack of confidence. They can also see that it’s nothing like the confident tranquility of Jesus.[12]

You see, even though this story looks like it ends with Joseph’s humiliation in spite of his integrity, there are signs of life in the concluding verses (vv. 21-23). The repeated words we saw in the first six verses (“the LORD was with Joseph,” “favor,” “put Joseph in charge,” “paid no attention,” “succeed”) indicate that even in Joseph’s humiliation, all is not lost.

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[1] Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis 11:27–50:26, The New American Commentary, vol. 1B, ed. E. Ray Clendenen (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2005), 726.

[2] Samuel Emadi, From Prisoner to Prince: The Joseph Story in Biblical Theology, New Studies in Biblical Theology, vol. 59, ed. D. A. Carson (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2022), 59.

[3] Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 16–50, Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 2, ed. Bruce M. Metzger, David A. Hubbard, and Glenn W. Barker (Dallas: Word Books, 1994), 374.

[4] Emadi, From Prisoner to Prince, 90.

[5] Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative, Revised and Updated (New York: Basic Books, 2011), 135.

[6] Mathews, Genesis 11:27–50:26,732.

[7] Emadi, From Prisoner to Prince, 11, citing the argument of Brian Sigmon, “Between Eden and Egypt: Echoes of the Garden Narrative in the Story of Joseph and His Brothers,” PhD diss., Marquette University, 2013.

[8] Robert Alter (Genesis: Translation and Commentary [New York: W.W. Norton, 1997], 225) calls this “a remarkable deployment of the technique of contrastive dialogue” which is often used by biblical authors.

[9] Mathews, Genesis 11:27–50:26, 735.

[10] Emadi, From Prisoner to Prince, 94.

[11] Tremper Longman III, Genesis, The Story of God Bible Commentary, ed. Tremper Longman III and Scot McKnight (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016), 481.

[12] Russell Moore, cited in Jonathan Rauch, Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy, Politics and Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2025), Kindle edition, 72.