Comentario sobre Génesis 39:12

AND HE LEFT HIS GARMENT IN HER HAND. Out of respect for his mistress he did not wish to take the garment from her hand with his superior strength, and he removed it from upon himself, as it was a garment which one wears as a robe and headdress. But when she saw that he left his garment in her hands she feared lest he expose her to the people of the household or his master, and so she preceded him to them, saying that he had removed his garment to lie with her, but “when he saw that I screamed he fled in confusion.” This is the meaning of the verse, And it came to pass, when she saw that he had left his garment in her hand.²³¹Verse 13 here. This is also why she did not say, “And he left his garment in my hand,” but she instead told the men of her house and her husband, And he left his garment ‘etzli’ (with me).²³²The word etzli (with me) indicates that he himself had removed his garment, as explained above.

And fled. So that he would not be overcome by desire.

ותתפשהו בבגדו, She grabbed hold of his garment, etc. The Torah reveals Mrs Potiphar's intention when she grabbed Joseph's garment by stating לאמור. This word needs to be translated here: "as if to say." She did not say a word. Her actions spoke louder than any words.

ויעזב בגדו בידה, “he left his outer garment in her hand.” Out of deference for her position as his mistress, he did not wrest the garment from her hands, although he was physically powerful enough to have done this.

ויעזוב בגדו אצלה, “he left his garment with her.” This is another example of Joseph’s chastity; he did not want to struggle for his garment with her and thereby involve himself in physical contact with her. He respected her dignity in not demonstrating his superior male power.

Schon Siporno macht aufmerksam darauf, wie besonnen und rücksichtsvoll Josef selbst in einer solchen Stellung einem solchen Weibe gegenüber gewesen. — וינס ויצא החוצה, er floh — jedoch draußen stürzte er nicht, machte kein Aussehen, sondern: draußen ging er. Sie vermutete diese Rücksicht nicht, sonst hätte sie nicht geschrien. Bei ihr heißt es: כראתה וגי וינס החוצה, sie sah ihn hinauseilen, deshalb rief sie. In ihrer Erzählung freilich sagt sie: וינס וצא החוצה er floh und "schlich" hinaus. Sie will ihn ja eben als den Verbrecher zeichnen.

ותתפשהו בבגדו, “she grabbed him by his outer garment.” According to Kohelet Rabbah on Kohelet 7,26, where the author describes a woman’s hands as having been artificially restrained, אסורים, the kind of woman described by Solomon there would grab men in the street and try and seduce them. Even the relatively chaste women are described there as aggressive in that respect. During the 12 months that Joseph was in Potiphar’s house, he was exposed to those tactics by Potiphar’s wife on a daily basis. When the Torah speaks of these ongoing attempts at seduction (verse 10) as occurring יום יום, “every day,” this must be considered as if Joseph had withstood a year’s temptation. The word is used as meaning “year” as in Esther 3,7. He would literally have to take evasive action, such as covering his face, practically shrinking to the ground. She would use instruments in order to force him to resume his normal posture. She would use the argument that she was not really married to Potiphar; he was a homosexual and had never consummated the “marriage.” He had to explain to her that the Hebrews were not allowed to have sexual relations with Egyptian women even if the latter were unmarried. She would threaten him with having him consigned to jail. Joseph would reply that his G–d had means of freeing him from jail. She would threaten to have him blinded, to which he replied that his G–d could make the blind see. Eventually, if it had not been for the priests who testified hat the drops of semen she produced as evidence that he had tried to rape her were in fact not from a human being, he might have been sentenced to death. This eventually became the reason why he dealt so extraordinarily generously with the Egyptian priests during the years of the famine. (Tanchuma, section 8)

Accordingly, when the power of her love overwhelmed her, and he was no longer paying any attention to her words, she seized him by his robe, reasoning that, once she had been so bold as to grab hold of it, he would be ashamed to despise her and tell her (outright): ‘I do not desire you!’ He, for his part, for fear that he would let himself be seduced by her advances and her conduct, fled away from her presence, and went outside, not even tarrying to extricate his robe from her hand so that she would not seize and kiss him. This is what Scripture intends to convey by (the expression) ‘he fled’ (39:12). He also did not wish to extract his garment from her hand by superior force because she was, after all, his mistress, so that she was able to detach it from him; as it was a robe in which he would envelop himself, like a cloak, as Nahmanides has stated (in his commentary on this passage).

And he went outside. As soon as he left the room he slowed down so that no one would ask questions. She, however, assumed that he continued running and that people would soon know what happened; therefore she called to the men of the household.

וינס ויוצא החוצה, “he fled, leaving the house.” As a reward for Joseph’s fleeing the presence of his master’s wife on that occasion, G–d told him that He would reward him when the sea of reeds fled at the approach of Joseph’s coffin when the Israelites were facing the sea with the Egyptians threatening them from behind. (Tanchuma on parshat Nasso, section 30, interprets Psalms: 114,3: הים ראה וינוס, “the sea saw and fled” as meaning just that.)