Being Married to a Eunuch

I’m working on a project for a friend who is developing Sunday school curriculum. The project has required that I reread and paraphrase a lot of the Old Testament for reading out loud to children. It has been a good project for me, even if often I have had to make myself do it. It is not very intellectually stimulating.

However, reading through the life of Joseph this morning I saw something that arrested my attention. The translation of the Old Testament that I am relying on as my primary text is the English translation of the Septuagint found in the Orthodox Study Bible. In this text, Genesis 39: 1 tells us the following information about Potiphar, Joseph’s first master in Egypt: he was a eunuch and captain of the guard. A eunuch?  

As is my wont, whenever I encounter something in the Bible that startles me, I immediately checked the original languages. Yep, both in the Hebrew Masoretic text and in the Greek Septuagint text Genesis 39:1 says Potiphar was a eunuch. But Potiphar had a wife, a wife who tried to seduce Joseph.

In the Orthodox liturgical texts, Potiphar’s wife gets a very rough treatment. She is referred to as a new Eve found by the serpent to seduce Joseph--who is a type of Christ, for no sin is ever recorded concerning him. And while she did become a tool of the evil one to try to seduce Joseph into sin, I feel a little sorry for her.

I had always assumed that Potiphar’s wife was somehow just a wanton woman not satisfied with her husband; but realizing that her husband was a eunuch puts a new dimension on what was going on. It wasn’t that she wasn’t satisfied with her husband so much as it was her husband who couldn’t satisfy her, ever.

I find in myself a tendency to seek fault, to want to blame someone, to want to be able to show clearly who’s at fault, who erred, who made the mistake. But life is really much more messy than that. Certainly as Christians we can say Potiphar’s wife should not be seducing servants, regardless of her marital difficulties. Were she an Orthodox Christian, I would encourage her to look to God for help, to accept the cross she had been given. But she wasn’t an Orthodox Christian. She was an lonely, frustrated yet powerful Egyptian woman several thousand years before Christ. She lived in a culture in which there was no shame in seducing servants--in many such cultures, sex with slaves didn’t count.

Joseph did the right thing in fleeing from temptation. Today, in regard to sexual morality, we live in a culture that is more and more like the pre-Christian world Joseph experienced in Egypt: you are allowed to do what ever you lust to do, whatever you can imagine is acceptable, so long as it is with consenting adult partners. And so we Christians, like Joseph as a slave in Egypt, are tempted to give in to our carnal lusts just because it’s not a big deal culturally, everyone is doing it. Just like Joseph we must flee temptation--even if it means creating misunderstanding and angering those who don’t understand our Christ-like calling.

However, even as we flee the world, we must be careful not to judge the world. The serpent uses hurt and broken people to tempt us, people who don’t realize what they are doing. Aren’t these Jesus’ exact words from the cross: “Forgive them Father, for they don’t know what they are doing.” Like Jesus, we are crucified; but our crosses are often of the self-inflicted kind. We linger in passions until it feels like torment as we try to flee them.  

But let’s not blame the world or those in the world. Let’s blame ourselves and pray that God have mercy on us and on all His broken creatures.

Fasting

At the end of Romans, starting with chapter 12, St. Paul begins to give practical application.  It is the common pattern in St. Paul’s letters to start by thanking and praising God (doxology), and then move on to explaining a little about who God is and what He has done for us (theology), and then to move on to behavioral application, the “so what” of theology: how we apply theology in our life to be transformed and saved (soteriology).  One of the practical aspects of Christian life that St. Paul deals with at the end of Romans is fasting.  But he does not say what most people think he will say.

In Romans 14, St. Paul contrasts those who fast (eat only vegetables) with those who “eat all things.”  What is surprising is that St. Paul says that “he who is weak eats only vegetables.”  That is, the weak are the ones who fast while others “believe they may eat all things” and so don’t fast.  Although the exact historical context in which St. Paul is addressing this matter of eating or not eating is not the context of liturgical fasting; nevertheless, the Church presents this passage on the Sunday of Cheesefare (the last Sunday before Great Lent begins) as the model for Christian liturgical fasting: “He who is weak eats only vegetables.”

For almost all of my life I have been under the impression that it was the spiritually strong who fasted.  So when I exegeted this passage, I used all of the exegetical tricks to make this passage not really mean what it said.  I just couldn’t wrap my mind around the possibility that fasting was a manifestation of weakness.  After all, Jesus fasted, the Apostles fasted, great Christians throughout the ages fasted.  How could fasting be for the weak?  Later on in the chapter, St. Paul turns the table somewhat and argues that although “nothing is unclean,” one should not eat anything if it might offend the weaker (fasting) brother.  So I interpreted the first part of the chapter to mean the exact opposite of what St. Paul actually says.  I argued that it was a rhetorical set-up to make the point at the end of the chapter that the strong (whom, I argued, St. Paul was facetiously calling “strong”) should fast anyway for the sake of the weak (whom, I argued, St. Paul was facetiously calling “weak”).  Thus I got the passage to mean what I already believed.

 However, recently I have begun in the smallest possible way to become aware of the mystery of weakness.  Jesus fasted because he was weak--He took on our weakness.  The Apostles and Saints fasted because they knew their weakness, because of their dependence on God, because of their weak, fickle and unreliable self.  In their weakness they fasted, and in fasting found God’s strength.  I no longer read St. Paul’s use of weak and strong in this passage as examples of facetious language.  Rather, I see St. Paul revealing a mystery.  God’s strength is perfected in weakness.

St. Paul’s instruction to those who do not fast is quite interesting.  He says, “let not him who eats despise him who does not eat.”  It is very easy, even natural in a merely human sort of way, for the strong to despise the weak.  “Those who need a crutch use a crutch,” the strong may say (or think) concerning the weak.  The strong see no need to fast too much, to pray too much, to pay too much attention to matters of the soul.  And thus the strong may be tempted to despise those whose religious zeal seems to be too much.  The strong may indeed see (or merely think they see) the many weaknesses of the weak ones who fast and pray so diligently, and because of those weaknesses be tempted to look down upon or despise them.  St. Paul warns the believing strong ones not to despise the weak ones, for as St. Paul says elsewhere, it is when I am weak then I am strong.

To the fasters St. Paul gives this exhortation: “Let not him who does not eat judge him who eats.”  Here St. Paul get’s pretty forceful: “Who are you to judge another man’s servant?”  Whenever those who fast judge those who do not fast, they are doing nothing less that usurping God’s place as master.  It is better not to fast at all than to fast and judge those who do not fast.  Those who do not fast may not be fasting because they are strong (which which may or may not indeed be the case), but those who fast and judge do so only by putting themselves in God’s place as judge (which is sin approaching the level of Lucifer’s self exaltation).  Again, it is better not to fast than to fast and judge.


In the Pachomian communities (Egypt, 4th -7th centuries), the monks were commanded to eat with their large cowls pulled over their heads so they could not see what or how much their neighbour was eating.  We would not be hurt if we practiced a similar discipline.  I don’t suggest that we wear cowls to eat, but I do suggest that we take St. Paul’s words at face value: “Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food.”  What my brother or sister eats of doesn’t eat is none of my business.  Who am I to judge God’s servant?

Hebrews 10:24

“And let us consider one another to stir up love and good works.” (NKJV)

“And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.” (NIV).

For many years—most of my adult life really—I read the NIV translation of the Bible. This verse in Hebrews played an important role in how I understood relationships among Christians were supposed to work. That is, I thought we were supposed to spend time imagining ways to spur others on to love and good works: we were supposed to pay attention to how and whether others were loving and doing good works, and think of ways to prod them into doing what they should be doing. In the end, such a reading of this verse becomes nothing more than a license for busy bodying.

Reading the passage in Greek yesterday, I was surprised to discover that the King James tradition provides the more accurate translation. Instead of considering how to spur one another, we are to consider one another into [resulting in] the stirring up [inciting, stimulating] of love and good works. To tell you the truth, the Greek is ambiguous. I can see why modern translators might want to provide an easy solution. It is reasonable to assume that the love and good works are done by the “one another” whom we are to consider, and the preposition (into) implies a causal relationship; so with a little translator’s license we have an easily readable translation that “makes good sense” to modern Protestant English readers. And why not? What else would we consider in others except how to make them better?

St. John Chrysostom read this verse very differently. Faced with the same ambiguity of text, he provides a very different interpretation, one that calls for humility and considering others as better than ourselves. St. John asks, “What is, ‘let us consider one another’? It means if a certain one is virtuous, let us imitate this one. Let us look upon him so as to love…. For from love all good works come.” For St. John, the stirring up of love comes from considering others who are more virtuous than our selves. Of course to do this one must actually believe that others are more virtuous.

The shift in perspective is telling. St. John assumes that we look for what is good and emulable in one another, not for what needs to be fixed—and then to consider how I am supposed to help fix it. And isn’t this our usual (sinful) tendency, to see what’s wrong with one another and to think we know how to fix it. Instead, the writer of Hebrews is calling us to stimulate love and good works in ourselves by considering what is good and virtuous in others.