The air in Potiphar’s house was thick, a stew of baking dust from the courtyard and the faint, clinging scent of myrrh from the master’s chambers. Joseph moved through it, a silhouette against the white glare of the midday sun. His hands, calloused from years of other labors, now traced the grain of Egyptian cypress wood in the storehouse, his mind tallying sacks of emmer wheat and jars of oil with a clarity that felt like a gift, and a burden.

He was not supposed to be here. The memory of the Ishmaelite traders, the reek of their camels, the feel of the silver in his brothers’ hands—it was a cold knot in his gut, even now. Yet, in this foreign land, under this foreign sun, a strange quiet had settled in him. It was not peace, not exactly. It was the silence of a deep current, running underneath the chaos of his days. *The Lord was with him*, the record would say simply. For Joseph, it was the reason the numbers never lied, why the overseers trusted his quiet word, why the household, a complex machine of human need and ambition, seemed to hum when he passed through. Potiphar, a man sharp as a flint blade, saw only the outcome: prosperity. He saw the Canaanite slave not as a man, but as a favorable wind, and so he placed everything he owned into Joseph’s hands. Everything, that is, except his wife.

Her name was not recorded. Joseph knew her as the Lady of the House, a presence of linen and gold, of sidelong glances and restless energy. Her apartments were cool, shaded, fragrant with lotus oil. They were a world away from the storerooms and the fields, a world Joseph entered only to give accounts, eyes lowered, voice respectful.

It began not with a word, but with an absence of sound. He would feel her gaze on his back as he spoke to the steward. He noticed the servants would suddenly be dismissed when he arrived. One afternoon, bringing the quarterly records, he found her alone, the murmur of the house stilled.

“Joseph,” she said. Her voice was like the rest of her, smooth and deliberate.
“My lady.”
“The report from the Delta lands. Read it to me.”
He did, standing at a respectful distance, the papyrus in his hands. When he finished, there was a long pause. A fly buzzed against a latticed window.
“You have a gift,” she said, not looking at the papyrus. “It is a waste, buried in account ledgers.”
“My lord Potiphar is generous. I lack for nothing.”
A smile, thin and cool. “Do you? A strong young man, in a house full of… common things. There are other hungers, Joseph.”

He understood then. The air in the room, once cool, felt close and heavy. He bowed, made an excuse about the olive press, and left. The current within him, that deep, silent flow, seemed to quicken. This was a different kind of pit.

The invitations became less subtle. A whispered word as he passed. A lingering touch on his arm as she took a cup. A complaint of a headache, a request for his strong arm to adjust a sun-blind. He began to map the house by her habits, avoiding the inner courtyards at the hour she bathed, sending junior stewards on errands he would once have done himself.

Then came the day the house emptied. Potiphar was at the palace for a royal audience. Most of the senior servants were at the market or overseeing the riverfront docks. A strange, waiting quiet fell over the estate. Joseph, seeking to use the silence, went to his chamber to mend a torn cloak. The door had no bolt.

She entered as if borne on the still air. She had dismissed everyone, she said. There was no one to hear, no one to know.
“Lie with me,” she said. It was not a request. It was a statement of inevitable fact.

Joseph felt a cold clarity wash over him. He stepped back, his shoulder brushing the rough mudbrick wall. He could see the fine gold threads at the hem of her robe, the confident set of her mouth. His heart was a drum against his ribs.
“Look,” he said, his voice low but clear in the small room. “My master has put everything he has in my care. He has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing? It would be a sin—not just against him, but against God.”

He said *God*. Not the gods of Egypt, not the silent idols in the niches. *Elohim*. The word hung in the space between them, foreign and solid.

Her face changed. The smooth confidence cracked, revealing something raw and furious beneath. She stepped forward, her hand clutching at his outer garment, the fine linen tunic Potiphar himself had given him. He twisted away, a desperate, ungainly movement, leaving the cloth tearing in her grasp. He did not look back. He fled from the room, from the apartment, out into the blinding, empty courtyard, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm of escape.

She was left standing there, holding the torn fabric. The fury curdled, chilled, and hardened into a plan. She called the household servants. When they came, she was weeping, great heaving sobs that were utterly convincing. She held up the tunic like a battle standard.
“See!” she cried. “The Hebrew slave you brought into our house came to mock me! He came in to lie with me, and I screamed as loud as I could! When he heard me scream, he ran, leaving his cloak beside me!”

She rehearsed the story until it felt true, until the vivid image of the fleeing slave was etched in her own mind. She waited, the cloak beside her, for her husband’s return.

Potiphar came home in the evening, tired from the politics of the court. Her tears were fresh again, her story a torrent of outraged virtue. She presented the evidence. “This is how your slave treated me!”

Potiphar’s anger was hot and immediate. But it was a contained fire. He looked at the cloak. He looked at his wife’s flawless performance. He thought of the slave, the silent, capable Hebrew who had brought such blessing to his house. A public trial, a scandal involving a foreign slave and his wife… it was unthinkable. The truth was a tangled, dangerous thing. But the appearance of justice, the appeasement of his wife’s rage, that was a simple matter.

Joseph was taken not to a public executioner, but to the royal prison, the place where the king’s own offenders were held. It was a grim mercy. The doors of the dungeon closed with a final, echoing thud, swallowing the light. The smell here was of stale water, sweat, and despair.

He sat on the stone floor, the damp seeping through his clothes. The favor was gone. The trust was gone. All that remained was the silence, and the cold. And yet, in that darkness, the current remained. Unseen. Unacknowledged by the jailers or the other prisoners. But Joseph felt it. The Lord was with him. Even here. Especially here. The story was not over. It was only turning a page, heavy and dark, to a chapter he could not yet read.