Canaan, and dost carry on traffic with them?" The shop-keeper
protested his innocence, and he could not be made to
recede from his assertion, that a company of Ishmaelites
had left Joseph in his charge temporarily, until they should
return. Potiphar had him stripped naked and beaten, but
he continued to reiterate the same statement.

Then Potiphar summoned Joseph. The youth prostrated
himself before this chief of the eunuchs, for he was third in
rank of the officers of Pharaoh. And he addressed Joseph,
and said, "Art thou a slave or a free-born man?" and Joseph
replied, "A slave." Potiphar continued to question
him, "Whose slave art thou?" Joseph: "I belong to the
Ishmaelites." Potiphar: "How wast thou made a slave?"
Joseph: "They bought me in the land of Canaan."

But Potiphar refused to give credence to what he said,
and he had also him stripped and beaten. The wife of Potiphar,
standing by the door, saw how Joseph was abused, and
she sent word to her husband, "Thy verdict is unjust, for
thou punishest the free-born youth that was stolen away
from his place as though he were the one that had committed
a crime." As Joseph held firmly to what he had said,
Potiphar ordered him to prison, until his masters should return.
In her sinful longing for him, his wife wanted to
have Joseph in her own house, and she remonstrated with
her husband in these words: "Wherefore dost thou keep
the captive, nobly-born slave a prisoner? Thou shouldst
rather set him at liberty and have him serve thee." He
answered, "The law of the Egyptians does not permit us to