על יוסף י׳On Joseph 10
א׳
1[49] Thus he spoke long and wisely, but she remained deaf to it all. For lust is powerful to becloud even the keenest of the senses. And seeing this he fled leaving in her hands the garments which she had grasped.
ב׳
2[50] This action of his gave her the opportunity to invent a story and devise charges against the youth to punish him. When her husband came in from the market she put on the air of a chaste and modest woman who regards licentious practices with the utmost indignation. “You brought to us,” she said, “a Hebrew lad as servant, who has not only corrupted your soul when you lightly and thoughtlessly entrusted your household to him, but has had the audacity to dishonour my body.
ג׳
3[51] For not content with taking merely the women who were his fellow-servants, so utterly lewd and lascivious has he shown himself, he has attempted to violate me by force, me his mistress. The proofs of his insane depravity are clear and evident, for when in my great agitation I cried aloud and called those who were indoors to my aid, he was so scared at my unexpected action that he left his garment behind and fled in fear of arrest.” This garment she showed and made as though she were proffering a proof of her tale.
ד׳
4[52] Joseph’s master, believing this to be true, ordered him to be carried away to prison, and in this he committed two great errors. First he gave him no opportunity of defence, and convicted unheard this entirely innocent person as guilty of the greatest misconduct. Secondly, the raiment which his wife produced as left by the youth was a proof of violence not employed by him but suffered at her hands. For if force were used by him he would retain his mistress’s robe, if against him he would lose his own.
ה׳
5[53] But his master may perhaps be pardoned for his gross ignorance, since his days were spent in a kitchen full of blood and smoke and cinders, where the reason even more, or at least no less, than the body lives amid confusion and has no chance of quietly retiring into itself.