After Jacob died, the brothers worried that Joseph would exact his revenge so they flung themselves before him and said, "Here we are, your slaves." Seeing this behavior, Joseph replies "Fear not, for am I instead of God?" The Hebrew, not having punctuation, leads all the translations to add a question mark. This suggests that what would happen to the brothers would be left to God. However, one Midrash reads Joseph's words as a statement, Joseph said: "Fear not, for I am instead of God" – just as God is full of forgiveness, so Joseph would imitate God and be full of forgiveness too.