Having named the sin, Joseph reframes it. He does not deny it. He places it inside a larger story.
"It was not you who sent me hither, but it was from before the Lord that the thing was occasioned, that He might set me for a prince unto Pharaoh, a chief over his house, and a ruler in all the land of Mizraim" (Genesis 45:8). Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves Joseph's theological gesture with care.
The phrase min kodam Adonai it'abda milta — from before the Lord the thing was occasioned — does not erase human responsibility. The brothers still sold Joseph. The Holy One, in the Targum's language, did not command the sale. He occasioned the opportunity for a larger outcome to emerge from the brothers' freely chosen act.
The sages wrestle with this verse. Maimonides insists in Hilchot Teshuvah 6 that divine foreknowledge does not cancel human choice. Ramban (Nachmanides, 1194-1270) goes further and argues that Joseph is offering his brothers a theological embrace, not a legal acquittal. He is saying: your sin was real, but the Holy One wove it into a pattern that is now saving our family and saving Egypt.
Notice the list Joseph gives. A prince unto Pharaoh. A chief over his house. A ruler in all the land of Mizraim. Three concentric circles of authority. Joseph explains that his position, which will now shelter the entire house of Jacob through the famine, is the visible fruit of the brothers' hidden wound.
This is one of the central Jewish teachings on suffering. God does not author the wrong. But God is not absent from it either. The same sale that broke the family is now the means by which the family will be fed. Joseph names the sin, forgives it, and invites them to see the hand that worked in the dark.