sphere of moral responsibility. But the person who truly deserves praise and the
heavenly reward is the one who restrains himself from acting when this sort of
impulse arises or is about to arise.^22
In contrast, the Genesis Rabbah dramatizes the scene not through sexuality
but through idolatry.
She forced him from room to room and from chamber to chamber, until she got
him into her bed. There was an idol incised above the bed, but she took a sheet and
covered up its face.
Joseph said unto her,“The face of the idol you have covered up. Concerning him
about whom is written,‘The eyes of the Lord that run to and fro through the whole
earth’(Zech. 4:10), all the more so! [God will see no matter what you do.]”^23
Quranic commentaries do not mention an idol but indicate visions of
Jacob as stopping Joseph. Al-Thalabi explains:
And they entered the house and she locked the doors and he went to loosen his
trousers, when suddenly thefigure of Jacob appeared to him, standing in the house
and biting hisfingers, saying,“O Joseph, do not have intercourse with her. If you do
not have intercourse with her,you are like the bird in the sky who is not caught. If
you have intercourse with her, you are like the bird when it dies and falls to the
ground, unable to defend itself.If you do not have intercourse with her, you are like
adifficult ox upon whom no work can be done, whereas if you have intercourse
with her, you are like an ox when he dies and ants come at the base of his horns and
he cannot defend himself.”So Joseph tied his trousers up and left at a run...
Others say a voice proclaimed from beside the house,“Will you fornicate and be
like the bird whose feathers fall out, and whofinds he has no feathers when he tries
tofly?”Yet others have said that Joseph saw written on the wall,“Do not come near
to adultery. Verily it is an abomination and an evil way”(Quran 17:32).^24
Al-Baidawi relates the proof similarly, saying:
Some say that he saw Gabriel, others that a mental picture of his father biting his
fingers came before him, others a (mental picture of) Qitfir, others that a voice
cried to him,“Joseph, you are written down among the prophets, and yet you are
doing the deed of fools.”^25
In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Jewish texts develop elaborate
details resembling the rendition of Jami.^26 The twelfth-century Jewish
commentary Sefer ha-Yashar describes an elaborate palatial setting,(^22) Beeston, 1963 : 15. (^23) Neusner, 1985 : 232. (^24) at-Ta’labi, 2002 : 155–156.
(^25) Beeston, 1963 : 15.
(^26) Lassner ( 1993 ) discusses the historic interchange between Muslim and Jewish sources.
230 The Transgressive Image