Potiphar

Potiphar enters the narrative as the buyer of the enslaved Joseph and is identified by office rather than by lineage. Two short verses carry the entire surface mention of him in scope; what they fix is his rank, his nationality, and the household he opens to Joseph.

An Officer of Pharaoh

The figure is introduced at the close of the brothers' sale: "And the Midianites sold him into Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh's, the captain of the guard" (Gen 37:36). The title is doubled — "officer of Pharaoh's" and "captain of the guard" — placing him inside the royal apparatus rather than in private trade. The verse fixes the chain of custody from the brothers' pit to an Egyptian official's house.

The Egyptian Master

When the Joseph story resumes, Potiphar is reintroduced with the same titles and one added detail: "And Joseph was brought down to Egypt; and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh's, the captain of the guard, an Egyptian, bought him of the hand of the Ishmaelites, that had brought him down there" (Gen 39:1). The added word "an Egyptian" matters: the master in whose house Joseph will rise is explicitly outside Israel's covenant line, and the purchase is from the Ishmaelites who carried him south. From this entry-point Potiphar becomes Joseph's "master" — the household setting in which the rest of Genesis 39 unfolds.