Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 334 · November 30
How Then Can I
“There is none greater in this house than I; neither hath he kept back any thing from me but thee, because thou art his wife: how then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?”
The house is quiet, and nobody else is inside. Genesis says that when Joseph "went into the house to do his business," "there was none of the men of the house there within." This moment had been coming for a long time, because Potiphar's wife "spake to Joseph day by day," and day after day "he hearkened not unto her."
Listen to how he answers her, because he reasons it out aloud, one step at a time. "Behold, my master wotteth not what is with me in the house, and he hath committed all that he hath to my hand." Wotteth means knows: his master does not even keep track of what is in the house, because he trusts Joseph with all of it. "There is none greater in this house than I; neither hath he kept back any thing from me but thee, because thou art his wife." First Joseph counts up everything he has been trusted with, and then he names the one thing held back. Then he says where the real line lies: "how then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?" Potiphar is the man who would be wronged, yet Joseph knows the sin would be against God.
Doing right does not save him from trouble. She catches hold of his garment, he leaves it in her hand and runs, and she keeps it beside her until her husband comes home. She tells the servants her story, and then she tells it again to her husband. Joseph is put into the prison, "a place where the king's prisoners were bound." This is the second time a piece of his clothing has been used against him. Years before, his brothers dipped his coat in goat's blood and let their father believe a wild animal had killed him. Both times the garment told a lie, and both times Joseph paid for it.
From a prison cell, he could see no reward for saying no. What the chapter gives is one sentence that stands at both ends of his fall. When he first comes into Potiphar's house, it says, "the LORD was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man." After the lie and the prison door, it says it again: "But the LORD was with Joseph, and shewed him mercy, and gave him favour in the sight of the keeper of the prison."
That sentence is printed twice on purpose, and it is the promise. Joseph stayed in prison for years, and his name was not cleared quickly. Yet the same Lord was with him in the fine house and in the prison, on exactly the same terms. If doing right has cost you something, He is with you in that place too.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 334 is Not One Word Failed (1 Kings 8:56).