Potiphar's wife is a figure in the Hebrew Bible and the Quran. She was the wife of Potiphar, the captain of Pharaoh's guard in the time of Jacob and his twelve sons. According to the Book of Genesis, she falsely accused Joseph of attempted rape after he rejected her sexual advances, resulting in his imprisonment.[1]
In Genesis she is given no name, but in later medieval Jewish sources and Islamic tradition, she is identified as Zuleikha (zoo-LAY-kah; ; Arabic: زُلَيْخَا|translit=zulayḵā).[2] The story of Yusuf and Zulaikha is a popular one in Islamic literature.
The Bible (Genesis 39:5-20) narrates her treatment of Joseph, slave to her husband Potiphar:
Potiphar's wife, as well as Potiphar himself, are not explicitly named in the Quran, though it alludes to a governor (Arabic: العزيز al-azīz) and his wife. The book narrates her treatment of Yusuf as follows:
The Sefer haYashar adds more lurid details to Potiphar's wife's character. She tried to seduce Joseph with fine garments, delicious viands and amorous words but when these attempts failed, she resorted to threats. Joseph resisted every temptation and this caused the wife to feel sick. One day, she saw her friends cutting themselves with knives whilst they peeled oranges due to Joseph's appearance. The wife told them that she suffered like them because she was forced to see Joseph every day.
Other Jewish traditions say that the wife tried to kill her husband so she could keep Joseph to herself. Joseph reprimanded her for making him complicit in attempted adultery and murder. But the wife told him that she and her people would accept Joseph's religion if he yielded. Again, Joseph told her that Yahweh does not desire "unchaste worshippers" and after the wife invited him in a bedroom filled with idols, he told her that he feared Yahweh, who "saw all things".
They also state that the wife attempted to seduce Joseph during a religious festival at the Nile River and that everyone knew Joseph's innocence, including the wife's eleven month old child and Asenath, who was the first to inform Potiphar. But Potiphar imprisoned Joseph to save his wife from public humiliation. Even after Joseph's freedom, the wife forced Joseph to look at her by putting an iron spear beneath his chin. Once more, Joseph resisted. [3] [4]
Rashi comments that the wife of Potiphar saw through astrology that she would have children through Joseph. The astrological calculations however were slightly off. Asenath, her daughter (by adoption, in some accounts) became the wife of Joseph and therefore the wife of Potiphar begot grandchildren (not children) through Joseph.
Muslim scriptural commentators (Mufassirun) have regarded Zuleikha as a sinner and villainess with the exceptions of the great Muslim mystic poets Rumi, Hafiz and Jami. For Rumi, Zuleikha's obsession with Joseph is a symptom and manifestation of the soul's great deep longing for God. For this, he insists, it is true of any person's deep love for another.
Scholars such as Meir Sternberg (1985) characterise the woman's repetitive behaviour towards Joseph as sexual assault.[5] McKinlay (1995) noted that Potiphar's wife is treated as an object in his master's possession (Gen 39:8–9), and the reason Joseph refuses is not because he doesn't find her attractive, but because it would violate his master's trust and be a sin against the God Yahweh.[5] Secular feminist perspectives that are not trying to understand the biblical perspective but are critical of the patriarchal nature of the myth as part of broader textual criticism of the Old Testament have argued the woman is trying to assert herself as a person who makes her own choices instead of remaining an object owned by her husband, and invites Joseph to join her in this action which the narrative frames as a 'sin'.[5] Simultaneously, however, she abuses her position of power as the slave master's wife to coerce Joseph into sex, and to punish him for refusal.[5] Susan Tower Hollis (1989) demonstrated that the narrative of Potiphar's wife 'is in line with certain ancient folk-tales, where a 'woman makes vain overtures to a man and then accuses him of attempting to force her', with the man 'unjustly punished for his alleged attempt to seduce the woman.'[5] Rachel Adelman suggests that both Potiphar and his wife were sexually attracted to Joseph and planned to assault him. But the angels castrated Potiphar, according to Talmudic legend, whilst his wife proceeded her plot so that Joseph could be the "Jewish hero" that resists the "bear". Others believe the story is a typical seduction/adultery plot, which was common in Hellenistic literature, and a criticism of assimilation in Egyptian society.[6]