Topic: Example Of

1527

Important Words:

راودته (she sought to seduce him). راود is derived from راد which means, he or it came and went; he went to and fro; he was restless; it also means, he sought or desired a thing; راوده means, he endeavoured or sought to turn him to or from a thing. راوده عن الامر means, he endeavoured to turn him by blandishment or by deceitful arts from the thing. راوده علی الامرmeans, he endeavoured to turn him by blandishment, etc., to the thing. The Quranic expression سنراود عنه اباہ means, we will endeavour to turn his father from him by blandishment or artifice and to make him yield him to us; or we will strive to obtain him of his father. So the words راودته عن نفسه would mean, she desired or sought of him a sinful act using blandishment or artifice for that purpose; she tempted him to do the sinful act; she endeavoured to entice him and to make him yield himself to her; more literally, she endeavoured to turn him by blandishment, etc., from his disdainful noncompliance or from his purpose and will. الرود really signifies going about in search of a thing. المراودة means, seeking to make a person do a thing against his will (Lane & Mufradat).

ھیت لك (now come). ھیت is a word of exclamation denoting wonder. The Arabs say ھیت للحلم i.e. what forbearing mildness or clemency! The word is used in the sense of ھلم or تعال or اقبل meaning, "come or come forward." It is also used to signify "hasten" and "set forth journeying." The words therefore mean, "come thou" or "now come." The words also signify, "come, I am ready for thee, or I am ready to receive thee" (Lane & Mufradat).

معاذ الله (I seek refuge with God). معاذ is the noun-infinitive from عاذ. They say عاذ به من کذا i.e. he sought protection by him from that or sought refuge in him from that; or he put his trust in him, or relied upon him, for protection from such a thing. معاذ means, a refuge; a place to which one has recourse for protection or preservation; also the time at which one does so. The expressions معاذ الله and عیاذ الله and عیاذا بالله are all synonymous with اعوذ بالله معاذا i.e. I seek protection or preservation by God (Lane & Aqrab).

Commentary:

The verse clearly shows that the woman who sought to seduce Joseph failed in her efforts and that Joseph successfully resisted her temptation. The words, "He is my Lord," refer to God, and not to Joseph’s Egyptian master, as some commentators have wrongly supposed. It is difficult to imagine that a highly spiritual man like Joseph should have abstained from sin merely out of regard for the paltry favours of a human benefactor and not for the manifold Divine boons.

Whatever honour Joseph had received from his Egyptian master was really in fulfilment of God’s promises. So it was for the sake of his True Lord and Master that he followed the path of rectitude and refused to be seduced into sin, which would have amounted to an act of ingratitude far more towards God than to any human benefactor.

Joseph not only himself abstained from the heinous sin, but also warned his master’s wife against its evil consequences by saying that the wrongdoers never prosper. The expression راودته translated as "she sought to seduce him against his will," literally means, as shown under Important Words, "she endeavoured to turn him from his purpose or will by blandishment and artifice and make him yield to her against his disdainful noncompliance." This meaning shows that Joseph abhorred the evil deed to which she invited him and was determined not to yield.

1528

Commentary:

This verse tells us that the wife of Joseph’s master intended a thing about Joseph (i.e. copulation) in which she did not succeed. Similarly, Joseph intended a thing about her (i.e. turning her to pure thoughts), but he too did not succeed in his endeavour. That Joseph did not intend anything evil is clear from the previous verse. His only purpose was to dissuade her from her evil course.

By "manifest sign" is meant the heavenly signs which Joseph had already witnessed, e.g. the wonderful dream which foretold his future greatness (v. 5) and the revelation he had received when cast into the well, which also pointed to his later eminence and glory (v. 16). Surely, the person who was being prepared for the exalted office of a Prophet could not debase himself before an idolatrous woman.

The words, that We might turn away from him evil and indecency, signify that a person who had witnessed such signs could not stoop to evil. They may also mean that God brought about these circumstances so that Joseph should no longer live in the evil company of his master’s wicked wife and her evil companions which might have exercised a pernicious influence on him.

Here there is another point of resemblance between Joseph and the Holy Prophet. Just as an attempt was made to tempt Joseph away from the path of piety and rectitude, similarly, the idolaters of Mecca made an unsuccessful attempt to make the Holy Prophet give up preaching the Unity of God by offering to make him their king or amass great wealth for him or give him in marriage the most beautiful girl in Arabia. The offer was of course disdainfully rejected by the Prophet with the historic words, "If you place the sun on my right hand and the moon on my left hand, I will not give up preaching the Oneness of God." (Zurqani & Hisham). This constitutes the eleventh resemblance between these two great Prophets.

2165

Commentary:

The incident referred to in this and the preceding verses took place in a vision, and in a vision or dream a person experiences different kinds of sensations at different occasions. Sometimes his feelings and talk in the dream are subject to and under the effect of the dream that he sees while at another time they are not, and he feels and talks as he would feel and talk if he were awake. For example, if in a dream a person is glad over the death of his son, his feelings will be regarded as under the effect of the dream because in his state of wakefulness no sane person would be glad over the death of his son. So if the words spoken by Mary when she saw the angel in her vision were under the effect of the vision, then they would signify that when the glad tidings were given to her about the birth of a son she had a pleasant surprise whether God would work such a miracle as to give her—a virgin—a son. But if the words be regarded as a natural expression on her part when the tidings of the birth of a son were given to her then they would signify that she was completely perplexed and horror-struck at the thought that a son should be born to her—a virgin. In the former case hers would be a very pleasant surprise at the great favour that God was going to do her and in the latter case it would be an expression of bewilderment indicating the horrified state of her mind.

The words 'no man has touched me' show that Mary thought that the glad tidings about the birth of a son to her meant that the child would be born to her without contracting a regular marriage, otherwise there was no sense in her denying having known any man. The words, 'neither have I been unchaste' show that whereas in the previous clause she had denied having known any man lawfully i.e. in a married state, these words refer to her denial of having known any person unlawfully i.e. outside legal wedlock. In her reply to the angel she seemed to be thinking of the circumstances of her life in the Temple and of her vow of celibacy which obviated the possibility of her having any offspring. If she thought that the promise made in the preceding verse referred to the birth of a son as a result of her conjugal relations in some future time, as some commentators of the Quran think, then there was no occasion for her to express any surprise.

2173

Commentary:

Some Christian writers in their ignorance of the Arabic language have accused the Quran of an historical anachronism inasmuch as it has spoken of Mary as sister of Aaron. Instead of regretting their own ignorance they have blamed theQuran of ignorance. The question of Mary having been called the sister of Aaron in the Quran was put before the Holy Prophet himself and he told the questioner whether he did not know that the Israelites used to name their children after their Prophets and saints (Bayan, vol. 6, p. 16; Jarir vol. 16, p. 52).

Mary has been here called the sister of Aaron and not that of Moses though both were brothers, for whereas Moses was the founder of the Jewish Law, Aaron was the head of the Jewish priestly class (Enc. Bib. & Enc. Brit. under "Aaron") and Mary also belonged to the priestly order. Tabari has related an incident from the life of the Holy Prophet which gives us an insight into the meanings of the Arabic words اب(ab), عم (‘amm),اخت (ukht) etc. When once Safiyyah, the Holy Prophet’s wife, and incidentally a Jewess by descent, complained to the Holy Prophet that some of his other wives had called her a Jewess in contempt, the Prophet told her to return the taunt by saying that Aaron was her father, Moses her uncle and Muhammad her husband. Surely, the Holy Prophet knew that Aaron was not Safiyyah’s father nor Moses her uncle. This tradition shows that the application of these Arabic words is by no means confined to the above-mentioned blood relations.

Mary might have been called a sister of Aaron by way of reproach or taunt inasmuch as another Mary, the real sister of Aaron and Moses’ stepsister or his sister-in-law, had charged him (Moses) with having unlawfully married a woman (Numbers 12:1). A reference to this accusation is also to be found in the Quran in 33:70. Thus the elders of the Jews, by calling Jesus’ mother sister of Aaron, meant that as Mary, the sister of Aaron had, by accusing Moses of unlawfully marrying a woman, committed a heinous crime, so did she, like her namesake, commit a heinous act of giving birth to an illegitimate child. See also 3:36.

2418

Commentary:

The verse refutes the calumnious charges that the Jews had levelled against Mary. It also has a general application and may apply to any person who leads a righteous and upright life. In 66:13 a certain class of righteous believers are likened to Mary. Everyone of such righteous believers is Mary; and when God breathes into him of His spirit he becomes a 'son of Mary'. It is in this sense that the Promised Messiah has been called 'son of Mary' by the Holy Prophet.

Mary and her son were a sign in the sense that the fatherless birth of Jesus implied a warning to the Israelites that on account of their corruption and depravity and their persistent rejection of God’s Messengers they were to be deprived of the gift of prophethood forever. Jesus’ unusual birth marked a transitional stage. He had an Israelite mother but not an Israelite father. The next prophet was not to be from the House of Israel. With him the gift of prophethood, in accordance with the Biblical prophecy (Deut. 18:18), was to be transferred from the House of Israel to that of Ishmael. That Prophet was the Holy Prophet Muhammad. See also Introduction to the chapter 19.

4286

Commentary:

In this and the preceding two verses, examples of the wives of the Prophets Noah and Lot, of the wife of Pharaoh, and the example of Mary, the mother of Jesus, are set forth. The disbelievers are compared to the wives of Noah and Lot in order to show that the companionship of a righteous man, even of a Prophet of God, does not benefit an evilly minded person who is bent upon rejecting truth. Prophet Noah’s wife was of a more wicked disposition than the wife of Lot since the latter only preferred the company of her relatives to that of Lot, while Noah’s son, probably under the corrupting influence of his mother, had rejected his father’s Message. The wife of Pharaoh stands for those believers who, though passionately desiring and praying to get rid of sin, yet cannot fully dissociate themselves from evil influences, represented by Pharaoh, and having arrived at the stage of the self-accusing soul (النفس اللوامة ) sometimes fail and falter. Mary, the mother of Jesus, represents those righteous servants of God, who having closed all avenues of sin and having made peace with God, are blessed with Divine inspiration; the pronoun (masculine gender) in فیه standing for such fortunate believers. Or, the pronoun may stand for فرج which, literally meaning a cleft or fissure, signifies an opening through which sin can find access.