'But we are reading the Sedrah (weekly portion) about Joseph. How are you going to work Sabbath-keeping into that?'
'It is not my profession. I am a mere man-of-the-earth. But what's the use of a preacher if he can't make any text mean something else?'
'Well, of course, every text usually does,' said the preacher defensively. 'There is the hidden meaning and the plain meaning. But Joseph is merely historical narrative. The Sabbath, although mentioned in Genesis, chapter two, wasn't even formally ordained yet.'
'And what about Potiphar's wife?'
'That's the Seventh Commandment, not the Fourth.'
'Thank you for the information. Do you mean to say you can't jump from one Commandment to another?'
'Oh, well——' The minister meditated.
IV
'And Joseph was a goodly person, and well favoured. And it came to pass that his master's wife cast her eyes upon Joseph....'
The congregation looked startled. Really this was not a text which they wished their pastor to enlarge upon. There were things in the Bible that should be left in the obscurity of the Hebrew, especially when one's womenkind were within earshot. Uneasily their eyes lifted towards the bonnets behind the balcony-grating.