David Bahn – Reflections

Genesis 39:11-12

One day [Joseph] went into the house to attend to his duties, and none of the household servants was inside. 12 She caught him by his cloak and said, “Come to bed with me!” But he left his cloak in her hand and ran out of the house.

Perhaps you’ve been in a situation from which you simply had to flee. The temptation was just too strong, the stakes were just too high, the dangers were just too great for you to stick around. Maybe it was a job that took more from you than you had to give, and you had to flee. Perhaps it was an encroaching wildfire: you had to flee. Maybe you chose to “get out of Dodge” as a hurricane was approaching. Maybe even it was a situation in which you were being tempted as Joseph was, and you simply had to leave quickly.

There is usually a price to pay when we flee: we lose valuables in our homes. We lose face because we are thought to be cowardly. We lose pay because we simply had to leave. We may even be falsely accused as Joseph was when he fled Potiphar’s wife and left his cloak in her hand. The fuller story of this incident is below, and found in chapter 3 of THE STORY.

We would like to think that by doing good, good will always come. We’ll be protected. We will be vindicated. But though Joseph’s life ends with him fully vindicated, it certainly doesn’t bear this out in the short term. The immediate result of his refusal to sin was to be thrown into prison, to be forgotten by those he helped while in prison, before he is finally vindicated. His commitment to doing the right thing, no matter the cost, cost him dearly.

I wonder how often we fail to do the right thing because we see all to clearly the near-term cost of our actions. Perhaps if we were to look beyond this moment, and into the future of God’s favor and the full manifestation of his goodness, we would be more bold to pay the near-term price for our actions that honor him and his ways. 

Sometimes we do have to flee. And sometimes when we do we lose things that are valuable to us. But the goodness, faithfulness, grace and justice of God is our clarion call to flee when necessary, believing that we will experience the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living (cf. Psalm 27:13).

Genesis 39:11-20

One day he went into the house to attend to his duties, and none of the household servants was inside. 12 She caught him by his cloak and said, “Come to bed with me!” But he left his cloak in her hand and ran out of the house.

13 When she saw that he had left his cloak in her hand and had run out of the house, 14 she called her household servants. “Look,” she said to them, “this Hebrew has been brought to us to make sport of us! He came in here to sleep with me, but I screamed. 15 When he heard me scream for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house.”

16 She kept his cloak beside her until his master came home. 17 Then she told him this story: “That Hebrew slave you brought us came to me to make sport of me. 18 But as soon as I screamed for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house.”

19 When his master heard the story his wife told him, saying, “This is how your slave treated me,” he burned with anger. 20 Joseph’s master took him and put him in prison, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined.