The maid’s 38-year-old employer assaulted her while his wife was asleep, the Okaz daily said.
She grabbed a knife from the kitchen to defend herself and used it when he persisted despite having it brandished in his face, the paper said.
He is now recuperating after successful surgery in a specialist hospital in Riyadh, while she has been detained for questioning, it added, without identifying either party.
Foreign workers in Saudi Arabia, many of whom work in domestic service, are systematically abused and exploited, the New York-based advocacy group Human Rights Watch said in a July 2004 report.
The Saudi authorities strongly deny the charge.