Genesis Chapter 39

Sold into Potiphar’s house, Joseph prospers under God’s blessing, refuses his mistress’s advances as sin against God, and is falsely imprisoned, where the Lord remains with him.

Genesis 39:1-6

Blessed in Potiphar’s House

Genesis 39:7-12

Temptation Refused

Genesis 39:13-20

Falsely Accused and Imprisoned

Genesis 39:21-23

Blessed in the Prison

Genesis 39:1

The story takes up the thread dropped at 37:36, where the Midianite traders sold Joseph to Potiphar. Chapter 38 interrupted that line to follow Judah, who “went down from his brethren” of his own choosing (38:1). Now the same verb returns with a different force: Joseph “was brought down to Egypt.” Judah descended by choice and drifted into Canaanite ways; Joseph was carried down against his will and, as the chapter will show, kept himself clean in a foreign land. The narrator wants the two brothers read side by side.

Potiphar is described three ways. He is an “officer of Pharaoh,” a member of the royal court; he is “captain of the guard,” literally chief of the slaughterers, a title that may once have belonged to the king’s butchers but came to mean the commander of a bodyguard or of executioners, and later chapters connect his office with the prison for the king’s offenders (40:3-4); and he is “an Egyptian.” That last detail seems needless in Egypt, which is why it may be significant. If foreign rulers then held power in the north of the country, a native Egyptian in high office was worth noting. His name, like that of Joseph’s later father-in-law Potipherah (41:45), most likely means “the one whom Ra has given.”

The verse repeats that the Ishmaelites “had brought him down thither.” Joseph is passed from hand to hand like merchandise, and the bill of sale is all that the human eye can see. Yet the buyer is a man who stands near the throne, and the house Joseph enters is a step on the road to Pharaoh’s court. The psalmist reads the event from heaven’s side: God “sent a man before them, even Joseph, who was sold for a servant” (Psalm 105:17). Stephen sums up the chapter in one line: the patriarchs sold Joseph into Egypt, “but God was with him” (Acts 7:9).

Study Links

Cross References

Genesis 37:36Genesis 38:1Genesis 40:3

Word / Phrase Notes

הוּרַד (hurad) — was brought down

A passive causative form of yarad, “to go down.” Joseph does not go down; he is taken down by others. The simple active form described Judah’s free descent from his brothers in 38:1, so the contrast between the chapters is built into the grammar. Going down to Egypt is a recurring movement in Genesis (12:10; 46:3-4), and God later promises Jacob that he will go down with him there.

Genesis 38:1Genesis 12:10Genesis 46:3-4

סְרִיס פַּרְעֹה שַׂר הַטַּבָּחִים (seris par‘oh sar hattabbachim) — an officer of Pharaoh, captain of the guard

Saris can mean a eunuch, but in early texts it often names a court official without that sense, and Potiphar is married. Sar hattabbachim is literally “chief of the slaughterers”; the same title is given to Nebuzaradan, the Babylonian commander who carried out Jerusalem’s destruction (2 Kings 25:8). In Joseph’s story it designates the officer responsible for the royal guard and its prison.

Genesis 37:36Genesis 40:3