Letter to Potiphar's Wife (Gen 39)

Dear Mrs. Potiphar,

I write this letter with slight trepidation knowing I am about to go where angels fear to tread. You were a woman who made a false rape allegation and put an innocent man in jail as a result.

The behaviour of women such as yourself together with the attitudes of men who try to justify their actions mean that many genuine rape victims find it hard to be believed.

However, this passage suggests that you were so motivated by your own desires that you had little time to consider the impact of your actions on others.

Was the problem you had that this man, who was a slave was not giving you power over him? He was a foreigner who belonged to your husband and yet he rejected your advances.

You obviously found him sexually appealing on the basis of his appearance or was it due to more that? Did you also find his success appealing?

You seem to have had a desperation to sleep with him and I wonder if you had been a man, and him a woman, whether you would have raped him because you seem totally consumed by love. From the way it is described with him fleeing as you held his garment it appears that you had moved on from verbal sexual harassment of Joseph to physical sexual harassment.

When you are making the false allegations you bring his ethnicity in to it. Did that make it easier to make the allegation?

What were your feelings when Joseph was taken to the prison? Did you regret your actions or not? Were there others who had their suspicions about the truth of the matter?

I ask these questions because I find it difficult to understand your actions.

One of the things I am finding as I read these passages is how they relate to modern debates. The book of Genesis includes the stories of genuine rape victims as well as yours. In a world where the victims voice needs to be heard but each allegation needs to be fully examined this book explains why this is necessary by looking at both sides of the debate through different stories.
**for anybody who read this earlier overnight I don't know if I was hacked or if there was an unfortunate dyslexic/poor proof reading moment but I would like to clarify I have never made a false allegation of this kind.