person
Potiphar's Wife
Potiphar's wife
also: жена Пантефрия, жена Потифара
The unnamed wife of the Egyptian official Potiphar in Genesis 39, who seizes the fleeing Joseph by his garment; invoked here in a comic simile for the frantic grip such a figure would need to catch a running New Year's visitor by the coattail.
Reading notes
- New Year's Great Martyrs §1 Potiphar's wife
In Genesis 39, the wife of the Egyptian official Potiphar tries to seduce the enslaved Joseph and, when he flees, is left clutching his garment as proof against him. Chekhov invokes her grasping hand as a comic yardstick: even she, the Bible's most famous graspers of a fleeing man's clothing, couldn't have held on to one of these New Year's visitors -- she'd have come away with the coattail and the whole side of the man besides.