12. Yusuf

Go back to your father and say, “O our father, your son has indeed stolen and we testified, against him, only regarding what we knew, from the certainty of having seen the [king’s] cup in his saddlebag; we could not have guarded against the Unseen, that which was hidden from us, when we gave our pledge: had we known that he would steal, we would not have taken him [with us to Egypt].

‘Nay,’ he said, ‘but your souls have beguiled you into, have adorned [for you], something, and you did it: he accused them because of what had happened with them before concerning Joseph. Yet comely patience, will be my [course of] patience! It may be that God will bring them, Joseph and his two brothers, all [back] to me. Indeed He is the Knower, of my predicament, the Wise’, in His actions.

And he turned away from them, no longer addressing them, and said, ‘Alas, my grief for Joseph!’ (yā asafā: the [final] alif [of asafā] has taken the place of the [possessive] yā’ of genitive annexation [sc. yā asafī], in other words [it means] yā huznī [‘O my sorrow’]). And his eyes turned white, their dark colour was effaced and became white on account of his tears, with grief, for him, such that he was [filled] with suppressed agony, anguished and grief-stricken, but not manifesting his grief.

They said, ‘By God, you will never cease remembering Joseph until you are consumed, on the verge of perishing, on account of your illness (it [haradan, ‘consumed’] is a verbal noun equally [applicable] to one person or more) or you are of those who perish’, [of] the dead.

He said, to them: ‘I complain of my anguish — (bathth is) severe grief, which cannot be endured unless it is proclaimed [yubaththu] to others — and grief only to God, not to any other than Him, for it is worth complaining to Him; and I know from God what you do not know, [and that is] that Joseph’s dream is true and that he is alive. Then he said:

O my sons, go and enquire about Joseph and his brother, seek news of them, and do not despair of God’s [gracious] Spirit, His mercy. Indeed none despairs of the [gracious] Spirit of God save the disbelieving folk’: and so they departed to Egypt [to look] for Joseph.

And so when they entered to him, they said, ‘O Court officer, misfortune, hunger, has befallen us and our family; and we have come with reject merchandise, refused by any person who sees it, because of its worthlessness — it consisted of counterfeit dirhams or something else — so fill up, complete, for us the measure and be charitable to us, by overlooking the worthlessness of our merchandise; truly God requites the charitable’, He rewards them: he [Joseph] thus took pity on them and he was overtaken by compassion [for them] and removed the partition between them and himself.

Then, he said, to them, in rebuke: ‘Do you realise what you did to Joseph, in the way of beating [him] and selling [him] and otherwise, and his brother, oppressing him, after having separated him from his brother, while you were ignorant?’, of where the affair of Joseph will lead?

They said — after recognising him by his noble traits — cautiously [inquiring]: ‘Is it really (read a-innaka, either pronouncing both hamzas, or by not pronouncing the second, but in both cases inserting an alif) you, Joseph?’. He said, ‘I am [indeed] Joseph, and this is my brother. God has truly shown favour, He has been gracious, to us, by bringing [us] together. Verily if one fears, [if] one fears God, and endures, what happens to him, God does not waste the wage of those who are virtuous’, in this [respect] (the overt noun [al-muhsinīn, ‘the virtuous’] has replaced the [third person] pronominalisation).