One day when a great feast of the gods was observed, all the household had gone to the temple, save Zuleika, who pretended to be ill, and Joseph, who worshipped the One true God. Zuleika prepared a table with wine and fruit and sweet cakes, and invited Joseph to eat with her.
He was rejoiced, and his heart beat with passion; and when he took the goblet of wine she offered him, he looked into her eyes, and saw that she loved him. Then, says the Rabbi Ishmael in the Midrash, the form of his father Jacob appeared in the window or doorway, and thus addressed him: “Joseph! hereafter the names of thy brothers engraven on gems shall adorn the breastplate of the High Priest, and shall thine be absent from among them?” Then Joseph dug his ten fingers into the ground, and so conquered himself.[[414]]
The Mussulmans say also that Joseph was brought to his senses by seeing the vision of his father in the door biting his finger reproachfully at him.[[415]]
When Potiphar returned home, Zuleika brought false accusations against Joseph, but a babe who was in its cradle, in the room,—the child was a relation of Zuleika,—lifted up its voice in protest, and said, “Potiphar, if you want to know the truth, examine the torn portion of the garment. If it is from the front of the dress, then know that Zuleika was struggling to thrust Joseph from approaching her; if from the back, know that she was pursuing him.”
Potiphar obeyed the voice of the sucking child, and found that his wife had spoken falsely, and that Joseph was innocent.[[416]]
Now one of the neighbours had seen all that took place, for she was sick, and had not attended the feast, so the whole affair was soon a matter of gossip throughout the town. Then Zuleika invited all the ladies who had blamed her to a great feast in her house; and towards the close of the banquet, when the fruit and wine were brought in, an orange and a knife were placed before each lady; and at the same moment Joseph was brought into the room. The ladies, in their astonishment, cut their fingers in mistake for the oranges, for their eyes were fixed upon him, and they were amazed at his beauty; and the table was deluged with blood.
“This,” said Zuleika, “is the youth on whose account you blame me. It is true that I loved him, but his virtue has opposed me; and now love is turned to hate, and I shall cast him into prison.”[[417]]
She was as good as her word, and thus it fell out that Joseph was placed in the king’s prison. But God would not suffer the innocent to be punished. He illumined his cell with a celestial light, made a fountain spring up in the midst of it, and a fruit-bearing tree to grow before the door.[[418]]
Joseph was five years in prison, and then the King of the Greeks, who was warring against Egypt, sent an ambassador to Rajjan desiring peace. But his true purpose was to throw him off his guard, that he might with treachery destroy him. The ambassador sought the advice of an old Greek woman who had long lived in Egypt. She said, “I know of only one way of accomplishing what you desire, and that is to bribe the butler or the baker of the king to poison him; but it would be better to put the drug in the wine than in the bread.”
The ambassador then bribed the chief baker with much gold, and he promised to put poison in Pharaoh’s meat. After that he told the old woman that one of the two she had named to him had been persuaded to destroy the king.