Brothers Keeping: Joseph and Job
leadership, bearing the religious name of Potiphar, given in dedication to a sun god, one he was committed to worship and maintain virtues, expecting such devotion from one with such an honored appointment.
Potiphar: You are a costly addition to my household and you can prosper if you prove your worth. I will call you Joseph because you were taken away, from where it does not matter, and this name demands you maintain virtue and dignity in my household. I will call on the gods to counsel and oversee all you do. I pray the gods will show you to be blameless. Be a good and humble servant. Never disgrace my trust in you.
Joseph: I remain always in God's hands, trusting in his grace, seeing He cared for me during my enslavement, designating my sale to you and hearing you to be a religious person, committed to worship someone other than earthly idols. I will give you satisfaction in everything I do, promising to fulfill all your demands.
Bystander: God had reasons for blessing Joseph, creating him handsome, pleasing to see, but more splendid in mind, guiding him to be chaste in body, directed by a virtuous soul, shining with beauty throughout, divine goodness capturing his soul and governing the elegance of his body, acknowledging one's soul rules the body, convincing all to seek righteousness, the soul being a body's mistress, one's body being the handmaiden of one's soul. Always aware the will can succumb to temptations, yielding to vices of the flesh, enslaving the body in evil practice, submitting one to bondage in sin, no person escapes temptation, arousing desire, opened by eyes to human beauty.
Joseph: Today has been a good day working in this house God prepares for me. Seeing my master's mistress, I greet her.
Bystander: Joseph must beware, coming to delight in a newly found luxury, streaming with temptation, beckoning him to satisfy lust, waiting for him to fall into sin, destroying his virtue, enslaving him into begging for God's mercy, praying again to be called from darkness into light, to welcome a time for rejoining freedom, to devote himself again to God's commandments, to speak without shame about His laws, to delight in grace and mercy, to exist for His love, passing it down for all creation, living to meditate on all He is, the I Am.
Sultry: You greet me but never with your eyes, hardly ever noticing my glances for you. Other men find me irresistible, their gazes never leaving my body. Why are you different, maybe preferring men to women?
Joseph: My Lord guards my eyes--protecting them from feasting on female endowments, ones designed to tempt me--keeping me pure for Him, reminding me my body is a temple for the Holy Spirit, telling me any woman entering my life, unveiling my eyes to acknowledge her beauty, would be chosen and sent by Him.
Sultry: The gods tell us to uncover our gaze, enjoy creation's goodness, celebrate its beauty, so come lie with me. The gods, glorifying use of our bodies, compel us to go for all one can get, never denying what our willing nature honors us to do.
Joseph: Doesn't the lord of this house, your master, believe you belong only to him and would punish you for straying from your marital bed? My master, being also yours, trusts me, having no concern about anything in his house, putting everything he has in my hands, keeping nothing from me except you because you are his wife. I will do nothing wicked, never anything to destroy his trust in me, nothing unworthy to sin against my God. My God differs from your gods, your idols created to worship bodies without a soul.
Sultry: Our master, my husband, cares little, spending his time regularly at the temple of prostitutes, giving no indication of his gender preference.
Joseph: That may be true but a man's common sense tells him to protect his wife from disgraceful encounters with other men, especially with trusted servants, humiliating him as the protector of his home, serving him with shame from such liaisons, disgracing him with discovery by others, realizing sinful discretions cannot be hidden from other servants in his house.
Sultry: Many times I have lusted after you and knowing you would refuse I now seize you by your cloak and will hold you until your nature wills to cover my body. You cannot get away. I must not fail, believing nothing can defeat me, suggesting to others my attraction might be fading, perhaps signaling my allure could be vanishing, proclaiming I cannot decorate an aging body, restoring it to its former beauty, having nothing to iron out crinkles my ticking clock exposes for one to see.
Joseph: You are beyond my authority, exceeding its limits, for the reason you are my master's wife, so how could I succumb to your desire, engaging in a wicked deed, sinning in God's eyes, tarnishing us both with shameful dishonor, fleeing from clamors of our conscience, destroying any virtue of modesty, punishing our souls with remorse, subjecting me to deserve greater enslavement, jeopardizing my freedom as a trusted servant. Only one unsleeping eye needs to see and report our deeds. Could you trust we would be unseen?
Bystander: Gripped with fear, escaping from her clutches, losing his coat, stolen in her grasp, Joseph freed himself, running away from her sinful desires. Again, Joseph's garment would determine his fate, this time no clothing of divine design, but one signifying his servanthood, introducing again a divinely designed circumstance, God introducing an opportunity to continue His purpose, acknowledging God creates all circumstances for Joseph to prosper, blessing all deeds, prompting his Egyptian master to give him authority over his household. Would this end his prosperity? Would he have to lose his clothes again, seeing them rent by fury, destroyed in protecting his chastity, seemingly to win God's grace, renewing something He had already ordained?
Joseph: Lord, free me from this woman and her temptation, seized from the serpent in Eden, condemning her with lust, forever encouraging her to want a man. Let my spirit within prevail to withstand her assault on my chastity, trusting some day God will choose a virtuous one for me, one I can love, smitten by her purity rather than her body, so I flee from anyone's lust, impure and insolent, demanding and wanton, respecting nothing.
Sultry: My Adonis escapes, leaving only this garment, colored with markings of a servant, identifying it as Joseph's. He will pay for rejecting me. No man can insult me so. I'll call for others to come quickly, enlisting accomplices, convincing them of my humiliation, shedding tears to confirm my dishonor--exacting vengeance--using others to betray Joseph, telling them: My master brought among us a Hebrew to insult my virtue, dragging me in to lie with, but I cried out loudly, sending him to scurry away when he heard my screams, leaving his garment during his hasty retreat, my cries protecting me from assault, as he abandoned intentions for me to be his victim, but my vengeance is for more than seeing him leave my house.
Joseph: If there was a time to desire Job's tormented face, scarred with festering agony, driving lustful ones into hiding, it is now for me, trusting it would assure protection. Common sense would shield me, voicing on my behalf, convincing listeners no one would venture close to anyone with Job's appearance, but God gave me no opportunity like his and prepared me for the worst when my master arrived, waiting claims of his accusing wife.
Sultry: I suffer because of my beauty, especially when I must follow the ways of women to make me more attractive. This was one such day when your slave hungered for my body, engaging my attention to satisfy his nature, coveting me with his attention, coming in to insult my purity, seizing me as no slave should do, but as soon as I lifted up my voice and cried he ran out, forgetting his garment with me, fleeing from the house, protecting purity for my virtue and honor. This is how your servant treated me.
Potiphar: His mistake confirms my troubling uncertainty, chancing a slave as a servant, knowing little of his past, wondering what drugs his mother might have taken before he was born. He will now spend his life in prison.
Sultry: (aside) Insulting me deserves the penalty of my fury, protecting my vices I join deceit to deceit, justly condemning this innocent self-righteous one, concealing my devious ways, insuring they can find new conquests on another day, trusting the next victim will not abuse my advances. History shows imprisonment is needed for ignorant innocents, testifying their devotion to some
obscure God. We have many gods here for people to choose and justify their desires. He should have chosen one; instead he follows his own. Would he have bedded me well, we could have secreted lasting happiness in each other's arms, but now I detest him and he must be punished, satisfying vengeance for one I come to loathe.
Joseph: I accept what God decides for me, agreeing He has reasons for my unknowing, appointing someone evil to oppose my virtues, letting a vile accuser stand at His right hand, ready to be used, wondering when she is tried, eventually on the Day of the Lord, if she will be found guilty, condemned by any interceding judgments.
Ministering to the Victimized
Bystander: The Lord's fated circumstances for Joseph destines him to be shackled again, this time bound by isolation in prison, but by His grace, His steadfast love for Joseph, He instructs Joseph's jailer to grant him favor, assigning him charge over all inmates under the keeper's care, authorizing him to oversee all their supervision, because the Lord was with Joseph, prospering whatever