This week's parashah tells us about Yosef’s great test with eishes Potiphar. Yosef was a seventeen-year-old bachur, alone in Mitzrayim, distant from all Yidden when he faced his difficult test, but with all his might, he passed the test.
The Gemara (Yoma 35:) says, "Every day eishes Potiphar spoke to Yosef and tried to convince him to sin. The clothes she wore in the morning were not the same ones she wore at night." Yosef kept his eyes down, so she placed an iron blade under his neck to force his head to remain erect. Still, Yosef didn’t look at her.
The Midrash (Bereishis Rabba 87; Tanchuma) states that eishes Potiphar said, "I will give you less food [if you refuse to sin]." Yosef replied, "Hashem feeds the hungry." She threatened to imprison him, to blind him, to send him to a distant land, but Yosef trusted in Hashem and remained steadfast.
Another difficulty in this test was that the yetzer hara told him it was a mitzvah. Rashi (39:1) writes, "Just as Tamar intended l’shem shomayim, also eishes Potiphar intended l’shem shomayim. She saw in the stars that she would bear children with Yosef but didn’t know whether it would be with her or her daughter." The Sfas Emes zt'l explains that the yetzer hara can’t convince tzaddikim to perform aveiros, so he tries to convince them that the aveirah is a mitzvah, and that is what made Yosef's test so difficult. Nevertheless, (39:8) וימאן, Yosef refused to sin.
The Divrei Shmuel zt’l writes that Yosef also saw in the stars that he would have a child with eishes Potiphar. He understood that this meant he would eventually fail the test and sin. This caused him to think, "I will anyway end up committing this grave aveirah, so what purpose is there in passing the test now?" But then Yosef told himself, "Right now, I can overcome the yetzer hara. Whatever will be in the future will be, but now I can pass the test." This thought saved Yosef from the aveirah. (In the end, he married eishes Potiphar's daughter Osnas. They bore children, and that was the meaning of what they saw in the stars.)
It also says וימאן by the mitzvah of yibum (Devarim 25:7, יבמי מאן). The Midrash (87:5) says that Yosef told eishes Potiphar, “If a person can refuse to do yibum (as it states יבמי מאן), which means one can refuse to perform a mitzvah, certainly one can refrain from an aveirah!” The Sfas Emes explains that Yosef was telling her, "Even if you are correct that it is a mitzvah, I may refrain, just as one is permitted to refrain from the mitzvah of yibum. When one refuses to do yibum, another path opens – the path of chalitzah. Similarly, Yosef told her that even if it were a mitzvah, Hashem could arrange another way if he turned down this opportunity. (Indeed, Yosef married eishes Potiphar’s daughter, Osnas, who bore Ephraim and Menashe.)"
