These verses are too long for me to type out, so I shall narrate their content and then comment on in it. My first narration is from The New American Bible: "Joseph was strikingly handsome in countenance and body, and Potiphar's wife kept sexually harassing him, demanding that he lie with her, but he kept saying no, that she was off limits as Potiphar's wife. He told her if he committed adultery with her, he would thus stand condemned before God, and he would not commit so grave a sin. She actually embraced him, he fled outside, and she kept his coat and showed it to her husband. Potiphar enraged at this betrayal, and putative attack by Joseph upon his wife, took Joseph and threw him into the jail reserved for royal prisoners."
Now let me paraphrase these lines from the Holy Bible (KJV): "Joseph rejects the sexual advances of the mistress of the household announcing that to commit this great wickedness would be to sin against God, and Joseph would never do that. She went to her husband, accused Joseph of making sexual overtures towards her (rape?) and Potiphar, enraged, tossed Joseph into prison."
My response: this very harrowing story reveals how slavery was an ancient, accepted institution even thousands of years ago, practiced by many peoples, but it is unjust, barbaric and cruel on so many levels. Slaves have no rights, no legal standing, no human rights, codified in the constitution, so this rich woman got away with railroading a good, innocent man.
It also reveals how slaves are sexual objects, the exploited and abused toys of their masters and mistresses.
When ruthless, evil people like Potiphar's wife seek to entice an innocent, good person to sin, and the good and godly person persistently says no, and the wicked entrapper finally comes to realize that the no is permanent, then they exact revenge, and she did. That is the price that a good person pays in a world of wicked people that punish them for their nonconformity, and sometimes the punishment is very harsh.
Joseph's fall from "Potiphar's grace" was steep and total.
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