What Does Genesis 39:12 Mean?

She caught him by his garment, saying "Lie with me." But he left his garment in her hand and fled and got out of the house. The physical confrontation of verse 12 is rapid: she caught him, she commanded him, he fled. Joseph's response to the physical seizing is to leave his garment and run. The garment: the same word used for the long robe his father gave him in Genesis 37:3: is left in her hand. The robe was taken from him by his brothers in Genesis 37:23; now another garment is left in another hostile hand. Joseph's story is punctuated by the removal of his garments. Each time, the garment is used as evidence against him.

He "fled and got out of the house": two verbs of rapid movement, the second reinforcing the first. He does not hesitate; he does not reason with her; he does not attempt to retrieve the garment. He exits. This is the moral action of a man who understood that no benefit could come from staying in the room. The flight from Potiphar's wife is the Genesis narrative's paradigmatic example of fleeing temptation: the action Paul will invoke in 1 Corinthians 6:18 ("flee sexual immorality") as the prescription for the same kind of situation. The model is not discussion, not resistance in place, but exit.

The garment left in her hand is the chapter's turning point. The evidence that will be used to convict Joseph in verses 13 to 18 is the garment he abandoned in the act of fleeing. By leaving without it, Joseph retained his moral integrity and sacrificed his legal protection. He could not retrieve the garment without returning to the room he had just fled; he could not protect himself against a false accusation without remaining to argue with a woman who had already demonstrated her willingness to use force. The flight was right. The consequences were unjust. The garment in her hand is both the proof of his faithfulness and the instrument of his condemnation: one of Genesis's most painful ironies.