sagely virtue of patience, which sages had because they believed that everything happens according to the Divine plan and would turn out for the best. Joseph thus looks like the model of an ancient Near Eastern sage, and the Joseph story looks like a didactic tale designed to teach the basic ideology of wisdom. George Coats argued that the Joseph narrative is a literary device constructed to carry the children of Israel from Canaan to Egypt, to link preexisting stories of ancestral promises in Canaan to an Exodus narrative of oppression in and liberation from Egypt. Coats described the two principal goals of the Joseph story as (1) to describe reconciliation in a broken family despite the lack of merit of any of its members, and (2) to describe the characteristics of an ideal administrator. Genesis chapter 45 Commenting on and , Walter Brueggemann wrote that the Joseph story's theme concerns God's hidden and decisive power, which works in, through, and sometimes against human power. Calling this either providence or predestination, Brueggemann argued that God thus worked out God's purpose through and in spite of Egypt, and through and in spite of Joseph and his brothers. Genesis chapter 47 Alluding to the policies implemented by Joseph in , on June 2, 1787, Benjamin Franklin told the Constitutional Convention: “There is scarce a king in a hundred who would not, if he could, follow the example of pharaoh, get first all the peoples money, then all their lands, and then make them and their children servants for ever.” Samuel Driver wrote that Joseph's famine relief measures in reflected poorly on Joseph's character, as to seize the surplus produce and then compel the Egyptians to impoverish themselves to buy it back was not consistent with justice and equity. Von Rad and Gunther Plaut argued that readers should not judge Joseph by modern opinion, but should place his actions in context. Von Rad and Nahum Sarna cited higher Babylonian charges for comparable loans. Hillel Millgram, however, citing an ancient Egyptian tomb declaration, argued that Joseph comes off poorly even by ancient Egyptian ethical standards. Commandments According to Maimonides and Sefer ha-Chinuch, there are no commandments in the parashah. Reading , "and Joseph shall pass his hand over your eyes," the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch taught that one should close the eyes of a dead person at death. Following the example of Joseph, if a