12. Yusuf

When he was nearing his end realising that he would not remain alive forever he longed for the everlasting kingdom and said My Lord indeed You have given me something of sovereignty and You have taught me the interpretation of events the ability to explain dreams. Originator Creator of the heavens and the earth! You are my Protector Guardian of my best interests in this world and the Hereafter. Take me in death to You in submission to You and join me to the righteous’ from among my fathers. He lived after that for another week or more. He died at the age of 120 years. The Egyptians were very covetous with regard to his grave; eventually they placed him in a marble coffin and buried him at the top of the Nile so that both banks would be blessed by his body — Glory be to the One Whose Kingdom never ends.

That which is mentioned of the matter of Joseph is of the tidings the tales of the Unseen what has been hidden from you O Muhammad (s) which We reveal to you; for you were not with them with Joseph’s brothers when they agreed upon their plan to plot against him that is when they resolved upon it and schemed against him; in other words you were not present among them to know their story and so tell it to others knowledge of it has come to you through revelation.

Yet most people that is the people of Mecca however eager you might be that they believe will not believe.

And how many a sign indicating the Oneness of God is there in the heavens and the earth which they pass by which they witness but disregard! not reflecting upon it.

And most of them do not believe in God such that they might affirm that He is the Creator and the Sustainer without ascribing partners to Him by worshipping idols; which is why when crying their ritual response to God they used to say ‘At Your service no partner have You save a partner that belongs to You; You possess him and all that he possesses’ meaning it when they said it.

Do they deem themselves secure from the coming upon them of a pall a calamity enveloping them of God’s chastisement or the coming of the Hour upon them suddenly while they are unaware? of the time of its arrival beforehand?

Say to them ‘This is my way — which He explains by saying I call to the religion of God being upon sure knowledge plain proof I and whoever follows me whoever believes in me man ittaba‘anī is a supplement to anā ‘I’ the subject predicated by what preceded sc. ‘being upon sure knowledge’. So Glory be to God! in affirmation of His being exalted high above having partners and I am not of the idolaters’ — this sentence is also subsumed by the explanation of his statement about ‘his way’.

And We did not send before you any messengers save men inspired by revelation yūhā ilayhim a variant reading has nūhī ilayhim ‘to whom We revealed’ — and not angels — from among the people of the towns the principal towns since they are more knowledgeable and wiser than the people of the desert who are crude and ignorant. Have they the people of Mecca not travelled in the land and seen the nature of the consequence for those who were before them? that is how they ended up when they were destroyed for denying their messengers? And verily the abode of the Hereafter that is Paradise is better for those who are wary of God. Will they not understand? read a-fa-lā ya‘qilūn or a-fa-lā ta‘qilūn. ‘Will you not understand?’ this O people of Mecca and so have faith?

Until hattā indicates the end result indicated by the previous statement wa-mā arsalnā min qablika illā rijālan And We did not send before you any messengers save men above Q. 12109 that is to whom Our support waned until when the messengers despaired and thought when the messengers were certain that they were denied read kudhdhibū to mean that they were denied to such an extent that they believed that there would not be any possible acceptance of faith thereafter; or read kudhibū to mean that the communities thought that their messengers had been lied to concerning the victory which they had been promised Our help came to them and whomever We willed We delivered read fa-nunajjī or fa-nunjī; or fa-nujjiya as past tense ‘whomever We wished was delivered’. And Our wrath Our chastisement cannot be averted from the sinning the idolatrous folk.