Yusuf · Makki · ayah 57 of 111

Yusuf 12:57

وَلَأَجْرُ ٱلْـَٔاخِرَةِ خَيْرٌ لِّلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ وَكَانُوا۟ يَتَّقُونَ

“And the reward of the Hereafter is better for those who believed and were fearing Allāh.”

Saheeh International

Essence

As Yusuf is handed the storehouses of Egypt, the story stops to say there is a better wage, and this is not it.

A reflection

The happy ending the ayah will not call an ending

Most of us carry this part of the story as its payoff. The well, the slave market, the prison, and then at last the throne. Patience, paid out in full.

Now look at where this sentence actually sits.

The ayah before it has just given Yusuf the run of Egypt. He settles wherever he wishes in the land. And before the narrative moves a single step further, a sentence is laid across the throne.

The wage of the Hereafter is better.

Not also good. Better. And the sentence opens with a particle of emphasis, the kind that gives a statement the weight of an oath.

So the Qur'an will not let the throne be the reward, even for one ayah. It calls the throne a wage in the verse before, and then names a larger one.

A woman spent eleven years of evening classes to be called to the bar. At the ceremony her father, who left school at fourteen, cried in the back row. Afterwards on the pavement he said only this: good, now be honest in it.

He had not missed the triumph. He simply knew it was a door, not a room.

That is the instinct of this ayah. The story is not finished at the coronation, because the coronation was never what the story was about.

The commentaries draw the line plainly. What was stored for Yusuf in the Hereafter is greater, larger and more lasting than the authority he was given here. One adds the reason: the next wage is permanent, and the wage of this world stops.

And look at what Yusuf has just been given. Granaries. They are about to be filled for seven good years so they can be emptied in seven hard ones.

Emptying is their whole design.

The sentence over his head points to the one store that is not built to run out.

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.