وَلَمَّا فَصَلَتِ ٱلْعِيرُ قَالَ أَبُوهُمْ إِنِّى لَأَجِدُ رِيحَ يُوسُفَ لَوْلَآ أَن تُفَنِّدُونِ · قَالُوا۟ تَٱللَّهِ إِنَّكَ لَفِى ضَلَٰلِكَ ٱلْقَدِيمِ · فَلَمَّآ أَن جَآءَ ٱلْبَشِيرُ أَلْقَىٰهُ عَلَىٰ وَجْهِهِۦ فَٱرْتَدَّ بَصِيرًا
"When the caravan set out their father said: 'I sense the scent of Joseph; if only you did not think me a doting old man…' They said: 'By God, you are in your old bewilderment still.' When the bearer of glad tidings came and laid the shirt on his face, his sight came back. He said: 'Did I not tell you that I know from God what you do not know?'"
And this is one of the finest verbal links in the sūra: rīḥ is from the same root as rawḥ in verse 87 (ر-و-ح).
| Verse | Word | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 87 | Rawḥi'llāh | Relief — what one must not despair of |
| 94 | Rīḥa Yūsuf | Scent — what is carried on the air |
The common core of the root was given at al-Wāqiʿa 56/88-94 as "moving air"; I relied on it at verse 87. Seven verses apart the same root comes back in two derivatives — and the second stands like the concrete counterpart of the first: a breath of hope and a real scent.
I record this as my own reading; that the two words come from the same root is a datum of the text, and the drawing of the link between them is mine.
The root ف-ن-د: the weakening of judgement, the dotage of the mind; and to hold a saying weak and false. Fanad — the mental weakness that comes with old age. The word occurs in the Qurʾān only here.
And that the sentence is left unfinished must be recorded: lawlā an tufannidūn — "if only you did not think me a doting old man…" The apodosis is not written. This is another instance of the technique in verse 15.
The sentence was treated at al-Ḍuḥā 93/7 (wa-wajadaka ḍāllan fa-hadā) where the uses of the root ḍalāl in the Qurʾān were listed:
"By God, you are in your old bewilderment still" (Yūsuf 12/95). Here ḍalāl is used of a prophet, and those who say it are not charging him with unbelief — they find it unreasonable that he should believe Joseph is still alive. The same root also occurs at Yūsuf 12/8 in what the brothers say about their father.
| Verse | Expression | When |
|---|---|---|
| 8 | Inna abānā la-fī ḍalālin mubīn | At the beginning of the story |
| 95 | Innaka la-fī ḍalālika'l-qadīm | At the end of the story |
The same root, about the same person, at the two ends of the sūra. And in the second use a word has been added: al-qadīm — "old". That is, the saying is built so as to take in the first saying too.
This is a countable repetition within the sūra, and I record it as an observation: the brothers will say exactly the opposite one verse later (97: innā kunnā khāṭiʾīn).
The root ر-د-د, Form VIII: to turn back. And the verb differs from yaʾti baṣīrā in verse 93 — it was treated there.
أَلَمْ أَقُل لَّكُمْ إِنِّىٓ أَعْلَمُ مِنَ ٱللَّهِ مَا لَا تَعْلَمُونَ — and the sentence is a word-for-word repetition of verse 86.
The same sentence ten verses apart, one before and one after. This is a countable repetition within the sūra.
And the content of the sentence is worth noting: aʿlamu mina'llāhi mā lā taʿlamūn. The preposition (min) must be recorded: the knowledge is tied not to the man's own acuteness but to a source. This comes from the same place as li-mā ʿallamnāhu in verse 68.