[of corn], thin and blasted with the east wind". Reading , "And he gathered up all the food", Abraham ibn Ezra argued that one cannot read the word "all" literally, for if Joseph had taken all the food, then the Egyptians would have starved to death. Rather, Ibn Ezra argued that Joseph gathered as much of the food as he could without causing starvation. Naḥmanides, however, disagreed, arguing that Joseph took control of all the food in Egypt and distributed quantities to the Egyptian people each year in accordance with their needs for sustenance. Joseph centralized the distribution of food so that people would not waste it. Naḥmanides noted that it is unclear whether Joseph paid money for the food from the royal treasury at a low price or Pharaoh took the food by force. Genesis chapter 42 Maimonides used Joseph's words in to illustrate how God and God's life are one. Maimonides argued that were God to live as life is usually conceived, there would be more than one god – God and God's life – and this is not so. Maimonides taught that it is beyond human capacity to relate or to grasp this matter in its entirety. Thus in , Joseph says, "By the life (, chei) of Pharaoh", and in , Abigail says to David, "By the life [, chei] of your soul", but does not say, "By the life [, chei] of God" but "As God lives" (, chai Adonai). This shows that God and God's life are not two separate things, as are the lives of living beings. Genesis chapter 43 Following the Midrash, Rashi read the steward's words to the brothers in , "Your God, and the God of your father, has given you treasure", to mean that God gave them the money in their merit, and if their merit was insufficient, the God of their father Jacob gave it to them in the merit of their father. Similarly, Menaḥem ben Shlomo taught that the words "your God" signified that it was a reward for their fearing God, while the words "the God of your fathers" signified that it was a reward for Jacob's fearing God. Rashbam, however, read to report that everyone knew that the brothers regularly benefitted from miracles. And David Kimhi (RaDaK) interpreted the steward to mean that if the brothers found the money in their sacks, it was a