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The speech must have been longer, to explain the circumstances. We are just given the points. From Joseph he conceals nothing. He knows that Joseph knows more than himself. He tells Joseph that if he got the meaning, he would go and tell the Council. It would be impertinent for the cup-bearer to hold out to Joseph, the Prophet of Allah, the bribe of the hope of his release. Notice how blandly he avoids referring to his own lapse in having forgotten Joseph so long, and how the magnanimous Joseph has not a word of reproach, but gets straight on with the interpretation.
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Joseph not only shows what will happen, but, unasked, suggests the measures to be taken for dealing with the calamity when it comes. There will be seven years of abundant harvest. With diligent cultivation they should get bumper crops. Of them they should take a little for their sustenance and store the rest in the ear, the better to preserve it from the pests that attack corn-heaps when they have passed through the threshing floor.
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There will follow seven years of dreadful famine, which will devour all the stores which they will have laid by in the good years. They must be careful, even during the famine, not to consume all the grain; they must by special arrangement save a little for seed, lest they should be helpless even when the Nile brought down abundant waters from the rains at its sources.
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Or: "will be granted rain" - depending on whether one connects the verbal form yughath with either of the infinitive nouns ghayth ("rain") or ghawth ("deliverance from distress"). Although the crops of Egypt depend entirely on the annual Nile floods, the water-level of the river is, in its turn, contingent upon the quantity of rainfall at its upper reaches.
This is a symbol of a very abundant year, following the seven years of drought. The Nile must have brought abundant fertilising waters and silt from its upper reaches, and there was probably some rain also in Lower Egypt. The vine and the olive trees, which must have suffered in the drought, now revived, and yielded their juice and their off, among the annuals, also, the oil seeds such as , sesamum, and the castor oil plant, must have been grown, as there was irrigated land and to spare from the abundant grain crops. And the people's spirits revived, to enjoy the finer products of the earth, when their absolute necessities had been more than met in their grain crops.
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The cup-bearer must have reported Joseph's interpretation to the king, and the king naturally wanted to see Joseph himself. He sent a messenger to fetch him.
The king's messenger must have expected that a prisoner would be only too overjoyed at the summons of the king. But Joseph, sure of himself, wanted some assurance that he would be safe from the sort of nagging and persecution to which he had been subjected by the ladies. We saw in verse 33 above that he preferred prison to their solicitations. He must therefore know what was in the mind of the women now.
If the king ("thy Lord") did not know of all the snares which had been laid for Joseph by the ladies. Allah ("my Lord") knew all their secret motives and plots.
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Evidently, the King wanted to find out whether they had previously been encouraged by Joseph, or whether he was truly innocent. The noun khatb denotes "something that one has in view" or "desires" or "seeks to obtain"; and so the expression ma khatbukunna (lit., "what was it that you [really] had in view") may be suitably rendered as above.
Lit., "the wife of the great one (al-'aziz)".
Joseph's message was conveyed by the messenger to the king, who sent for the ladies concerned. Among them came the wife of the 'Aziz. "What was this affair?" said the king: "Tell me the whole truth".
The wife of the 'Aziz stood by, while the other ladies answered. Their answer acknowledged the truth of Joseph's innocence and high principles. When they had done, she began. She did not mince matters. She acknowledged her own guilt, freely and frankly.
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Some of the commentators (e.g., Ibn Kathir and, among the moderns, Rashid Rida' in Manar XII, 323 f.) regard this and the next verse as a continuation of the woman's confession; but the great majority of the classical authorities, including Tabari, Baghawi and Zamakhshari attribute the speech that follows unequivocally - and, in my opinion, most convincingly - to Joseph: hence my interpolation at the beginning of this verse.
Lit., "in [his] absence" or "in secret" (bi'l-ghayb).
I construe verses 52 and 53 to be a continuation of the speech of the 'Aziz's wife and have translated accordingly. There is both good reason and authority (e.g., Ibn Kathir) for this. But the majority of Commentators construe verses 52-53 to be spoken by Joseph, in which case they would mean that Joseph was referring to his fidelity to the 'Aziz, that he had never taken advantage of his absence to play false with his wife, although he (Joseph) was human and liable to err. In my view the 'Aziz's wife while fully reprobating her own guilty conduct, claims that she has at least been constant, and that she hopes for mercy, forgiveness, and the capacity to understand at last what true love is. Whatever false charge she made, she made it in a moment of passion and to his face, (never in cold blood, or behind his back). Guide the snare of the false ones, i.e. allow such snare to attain its goal. A) Ammara: prone, impelling, headstrong, passionate. See n. 5810 to lxxv. 2.
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Lit., "is indeed wont to command [the doing of] evil" - i.e., is filled with impulses which often conflict with what the mind regards as a moral good. This is obviously a reference to the statement in verse {24} above - "she desired him, and he desired her; [and he would have succumbed,] had he not seen [in this temptation] an evidence of his Sustainer's truth" - as well as to Joseph's prayer in verse {33}, "unless Thou turn away their guile from me, I might yet yield to their allure". (See also note [23] above.) Joseph's stress on the weakness inherent in human nature is a sublime expression of humility on the part of one who himself had overcome that very weakness: for, as the sequence shows, he attributes his moral victory not to himself but solely to the grace and mercy of God.
Lit., "except those upon whom...", etc. According to most of the commentators, the pronoun ma (lit., "that which") is here synonymous with man ("he who" or "those who").
See n. 1712. I construe this verse to be a continuation of the speech of the wife of the 'Aziz. It is more appropriate to her than to Joseph.
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Joseph had not yet appeared before the king. The king's order in the same terms in verse 50 above had led to a message from Joseph and the subsequent public proceedings with the ladies. Now that Joseph's innocence, wisdom, truth, and trustworthiness had been Proved, and confirmed by the splendid tribute of the courtier's wife, and Joseph's own manly bearing before the king, the king was much impressed, and took him specially to serve about his own person as his trusty and confidential Wazir. If, as is probable, the 'Aziz had by this time died (for he is never mentioned again) Joseph succeeded to his office, and he is addressed as 'Aziz in verse 78 below. But Joseph got more than his rank and powers, as specially selected to carry out a great emergency policy to meet the very difficult times of depression that were foretold. He was given plenary powers and the fullest confidence that a king could give to his most trusted and best-proved Wazir or Prime Minister, with special access to his Person, like a Grand Chamberlain.
Who was this Pharaoh, and what approximate date could we assign to him? He was probably a king of the Hyksos Dynasty, somewhere between the 19th and the 17th century B.C.
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By making this request, Joseph wanted to assure an efficient build-up of grain reserves during the coming years of plenty, knowing well that they would be followed by seven years of scarcity. It is obvious from the sequence that his request was granted, and that he was able to fulfil the task which he had set himself.
Joseph had been given plenary authority by the king. He could have enjoyed his dignity, drawn his emoluments, put the hard and perhaps unpopular work on the shoulders of others, and kept to himself the glitter and the kudos. But that was not his way, nor can it indeed be the way of any one who wants to do real service. He undertook the hardest and most unpopular task himself. Such a task was that of organising reserves in times of plenty, against the lean years to come. He deliberately asked to be put in charge of the granaries and store-houses, and the drudgery of establishing them and guarding them, for the simple reason that he understood that need better than any one else, and was prepared to take upon himself rather than throw on to another the obloquy of restricting supplies in times of plenty.
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I.e., sometimes in this world as well, but invariably in the hereafter, as the sequence shows.
What a wonderful example of the working of divine Providence! The boy whom his jealous brothers got rid of by selling him into slavery for a miserable price becomes the most trusted dignitary in a foreign land, chief minister in one of the greatest empires of the world of that day. And this not for himself only, but for his family, and for that noble example of righteousness and strenuous service, which he was to set for all time. According to tradition, Joseph's age was barely 30 at that time! As when, or where he pleased: haithu refers to manner, time, or place. He had almost absolute powers, but as his fidelity was fully proved (xii. 53) these powers were for service rather than for self.
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Lit., "for those who have attained to faith...", etc.
To the righteous, whatever rewards (if any) that come in this world are welcome for the opportunities of service which they open out. But the true and best reward is in the Hereafter.
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I.e., to buy wheat from the stores which Joseph had accumulated during the seven years of plenty: for all the countries in the vicinity of Egypt were by now affected by the famine which he had predicted, and Egypt alone had a surplus, the distribution of which he supervised personally (cf. Genesis xii, 54-57).
Years pass; the times of prosperity go by: famine holds the land in its grip; and it extends to neighbouring countries. Joseph's preparations are complete. His reserves are ample to meet the calamity. Not only does Egypt bless him, but neighbouring countries send to Egypt to purchase corn. All are received with hospitality, and corn is sold to them according to judicious measure. Now there has been one sorrow gnawing at Joseph's heart. His poor father Jacob! How he must have wept, as indeed he did, at the loss of his beloved Joseph! And Joseph's little brother Benjamin, born of the same mother as himself; would the other ten brothers, not by the same mother, have any affection for him, or would they treat him, as they treated Joseph? How would the whole family be in these hard times? A sort of answer came when the ten selfish brothers, driven by famine, came from Canaan to buy corn. Joseph, though so great a man, kept the details of the famine department in his own hands, otherwise there might have been waste. But to the public he was a mighty Egyptian administrator, probably in Egyptian dress, and with all the paraphernalia of his rank about him. When his brothers came, he knew them, but they did not know he was Joseph. In their thoughts was probably some menial slave in a remote household, perhaps already starved to death in these hard times!
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Lit., "a brother of yours from your father" - i.e., their half-brother Benjamin, who was Joseph's full brother (their mother having been Rachel, Jacob's favourite wife), whereas the other ten had different mothers. Benjamin, the youngest of Jacob's children, had not accompanied his brothers on their first journey to Egypt, but they had presumably mentioned him in the course of their conversation with Joseph.
i.e., Benjamin. When Joseph hosted his half-brothers, they told him the number of people in their household for future supplies.
Joseph treated his brothers liberally. Perhaps he condescended to enter into conversation with these strangers, and enquired about their family. The ten brothers had come. Had they left a father behind them? What sort of a person was he? Very aged? Well, of course he could not come. Had they any other brothers? Doubtless the ten brothers said nothing about their lost Joseph, or told some lie about him. But perhaps their host's kindly insistence brought Benjamin into the conversation. How old was he? Why had they not brought him? Would they bring him next time? Indeed they must, or they would get no more corn, and he-the great Egyptian Wazir-would not even see them.
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