heard it and kept silent (not correcting Judah to show humility to their father). Eliezer ben Matiah, Hananiah ben Kinai, Simeon ben Azzai, and Simeon the Yemenite deduced from Judah's offer to remain instead of Benjamin in that Judah merited the kingship because of his humility. Genesis chapter 45 Rabbi Ḥama bar Ḥanina and Rabbi Samuel ben Naḥmani differed about how prudent it was for Joseph to clear the room in . Rabbi Ḥama thought that Joseph acted imprudently, for one of them could have kicked him and killed him on the spot. But Rabbi Samuel said that Joseph acted rightly and prudently, for he knew the righteousness of his brethren and reasoned that it would not be right to suspect that they might commit bloodshed. Rabbi Elazar wept whenever he read , for if men became too frightened to answer a wronged brother, how much more frightening will they find God's rebuke. A Midrash taught that "Joseph said to his brethren: ‘Come near to me'" in so that he might show them his circumcision to prove that he was their brother. Reading Joseph's reassurance to his brothers in , "And now be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that you sold me hither; for God sent me before you to preserve life," our Sages observed that even the wrongs done by the righteous are of service to the world, and how much more their righteous deeds. Reading Joseph's assertion to his brothers in , "God sent me before you to preserve life," the Mishnat Rabbi Eliezer taught that when a person seeks to injure an enemy, the person bars the enemy from getting any cure, but God is not so. God provides the cure before the blow, as it says in , "I would heal Israel even as the iniquity of Ephraim is uncovered." So in the days of Joseph, God did not inflict famine on the Tribal Ancestors until God had sent Joseph before them. The Tosefta deduced from that before Jacob went down to Egypt there was famine there, but after he arrived, as reports, they sowed the land with seed. Rabbi Levi used , 41:46, and 45:6 to calculate that Joseph's dreams that his brothers would bow to him took 22 years to come true, and deduced that a person should thus wait for as much as 22 years for a positive dream's fulfillment. Rav Huna