audience for the story were principally descendants of Judah, Judah was given the role of spokesman and hero in the end. Gerhard von Rad argued that the Joseph narrative is closely related to earlier Egyptian wisdom literature. The wisdom ideology maintained that a Divine plan underlay all of reality, so that everything unfolds in accordance with a preestablished pattern—precisely what Joseph says to his brothers in and . Joseph is the only one of Israel's ancestors whom the Torah (in ) calls “wise” (, chacham)—the same word as “sage” in Hebrew. Specialties of ancient Near Eastern sages included advising the king and interpreting dreams and other signs—just as Joseph did. Joseph displayed the cardinal 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. 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 38 Hermann Gunkel argued that what he called the legend of Tamar in depicts in part early relations in the tribe of Judah: The Tribe of Judah allied itself with Canaanites who are reflected in the legendary Hirah of Adullam and Judah's wife, Bathshua. According to Gunkel, the accounts of Er and Onan reflect that a number of Judan-Canaanitish tribes perished early. And the accounts of Perez and Zerah reflect that finally two new tribes arose. Commandments According to Maimonides and Sefer ha-Chinuch, there are no commandments in the parashah. Haftarah