judge what is right and wrong. The meaning rather is that God himself has acted with benevolent purposes in the entire event, and, acknowledging these, Joseph is content to harbour no grudge.1 Joseph finds in Yahweh’s good intentions sufficient motive for imitative benevolence. But to isolate the function of God’s sovereignty in these verses is not to resolve the tension between that sovereignty and man’s responsibility. On the one hand the words, ‘so it was not you who sent me here, but God’ (45:8)