Joseph fled from the advances of Potiphar's wife, but because she was grasping his cloak at the time, she still has it in her possession. She's going to use this item of clothing to back up her story that Joseph tried to sexually assault her. She can't deal with his rejection, but instead of realizing she was in the wrong for her harassment of him, she wants something bad to happen to him to salve her wounded pride.
"When she saw that he had left his cloak in her hand and had run out of the house, she called her household servants, 'Look,' she said to them, 'this Hebrew has been brought to us to make sport of us! He came in here to sleep with me, but I screamed. When he heard me scream for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran from the house.'" (Genesis 39:13-15) These are the servants who were missing when Joseph showed up for work. These are the servants she had sent on errands so she could have complete privacy in which to entice Joseph to bed. I think up until now she believed the only thing holding him back was the fear of discovery and that if no one was around he would give in. But Joseph wasn't saying no to her out of fear of being caught. He was saying no because it was the right thing to say.
We are never told the name of Potiphar's wife and I'm glad. She doesn't deserve her name being written in the pages of the holy Scriptures. She's about to do a terrible thing to an innocent man. "She kept his cloak beside her until his master came home. Then she told him this story: 'That Hebrew slave you brought us came to me to make sport of me. But as soon as I screamed for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house.'" (Genesis 39:16-18) She never seemed racist before. She wasn't, not while she lusted for the young handsome Joseph as he went about his work. But now she keeps referring to him as "that Hebrew" in a derogatory way as if her husband should have known better than to bring a "Hebrew" into the house. She's saying something like, "Well, you've gone and done it now! You brought a foreigner in among us---into our very home---where my virtue was placed in jeopardy. He sure had you fooled, enough that you trusted him to be in the house with me every day. But all that time he was having lustful thoughts about me. At last he has acted upon them! He tried to rape me! He would have been successful if I hadn't screamed as loudly as I could. That scared him enough to fear someone would come running to my aid, so he fled the house."
If this woman did any screaming at all, it was probably to call after Joseph to come back. But her husband can do nothing but take her story at face value since she's holding Joseph's cloak and Joseph has indeed fled and is not at his post. I think Potiphar feels a lot of guilt. He really believes he has been duped by Joseph. All this time Potiphar was going about his daily business without a care in the world because he trusted Joseph to look after his estate just as he himself would look after it. But Potiphar's wife's words remind him of something: Joseph is a slave. He's been treated like an estate manager and he's been given status and authority, but when you come right down to it he's the legal property of Potiphar. Potiphar can handle the matter however he wants. "When his master heard the story his wife told him, saying, 'This is how your slave treated me,' he burned with anger. Joseph's master took him and put him in prison, the place where the king's prisoners were confined." (Genesis 39:19-20a)
A man in those times in Egypt had the right to have a slave put to death for doing what Joseph is accused of doing, but I don't think Potiphar can bring himself to do such a thing. His relationship with Joseph has been more like that of a manager and employee rather than master and slave. I think he considered Joseph a friend, in a way. He doesn't have Joseph executed but instead he consigns Joseph to what must have been life in prison, for we will see that Joseph languishes in prison for quite a long time. That's because he's not incarcerated while awaiting a trial; he immediately begins serving a life sentence. There were no trials held for slaves accused of wrongdoing. Slaves were sentenced on the word of their masters and at the discretion of their masters.
Joseph is having a very rough life through no fault of his own. First he was sold into slavery by his brothers because of their jealousy that he was their father's favorite son. Since becoming a slave he's performed his work honestly and honorably, but still he's ended up in prison for a crime he didn't commit. If we go through life believing we are going to be patted on the back for doing the right thing, we are going to be disappointed. We're living in a fallen world filled with sin. Bad things are going to happen here to the godly and to the ungodly both. There will be people who don't like us simply because we stand up for what's right, and that's why Joseph finds himself in prison. He stood up for what was right and Potiphar's wife hated him for it.
This world may not be fair to us, and unbelievers may behave toward us in ungodly ways. Believers will let us down too, from time to time, whether they mean to or not. But God's eyes don't miss a thing and He knows when we've been treated unfairly. He knows when we're persecuted for standing firm on godly principles. Somehow, someway, whether it's in this life or in the judgment afterwards, God is going to make all things right and fair. So far Joseph has been betrayed and abandoned by almost everyone he's ever trusted in his life, but God is still with him. "But while Joseph was there in the prison, the Lord was with him; He showed him kindness and granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden. So the warden put Joseph in charge of all those held in the prison, and he was made responsible for all that was done there. The warden paid no attention to anything under Joseph's care, because the Lord was with Joseph and gave him success in whatever he did." (Genesis 39:20b-23)
God is going to do something far beyond Joseph's wildest dreams, but a period of time must pass while God prepares him for a great destiny no one could ever have predicted. Who would believe an imprisoned foreign slave would rise to become second-in-command to Pharaoh himself? No one. No one but God. It's for this very purpose that God allowed Joseph's brothers to sell him as a slave. It's for this very purpose that God allowed Potiphar's wife to bring false charges against him. Joseph is in a prison dungeon, but it's exactly where he needs to be, for he will perform a service in the prison that later allows him to gain an audience with the king. The king, unknowingly fulfilling the will of God, will place Joseph where God always intended he should be.
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