Yusuf · Makki · ayah 61 of 111

Yusuf 12:61

قَالُوا۟ سَنُرَٰوِدُ عَنْهُ أَبَاهُ وَإِنَّا لَفَـٰعِلُونَ

“They said, "We will attempt to dissuade his father from [keeping] him, and indeed, we will do [it]."”

Saheeh International

Essence

To promise the boy's return, the brothers reach for the surah's word for seduction, and pledge themselves as doers once again.

A reflection

They reached for the word the surah used for seduction

Most readers pass over this ayah as a simple reply. The brothers say they will ask their father, and they will do it. A polite promise, nothing more.

But the verb they use is not ask.

It is a verb this surah has already made famous, for the worst of reasons. She, in whose house he was, tried to seduce him away from himself. The same verb. The women of the city gossiped that the minister's wife was working on her young servant. The same verb again.

Corpus data counts eight uses of this form in the whole Qur'an. Seven are in this surah. Every other one in Yusuf is about the seduction.

And here it is in the mouths of the brothers, about their own father.

One classical commentary glosses it without softening: we will work on him, strive and contrive until we wrest the boy from his hand. Another adds that it signals how hard the thing is to get.

So the first hearers, who had just heard this verb used of the locked doors, now hear it again. The jolt is deliberate. The brothers' instinct, even for a good aim, is to manage their father rather than speak to him.

A fifteen-year-old sits in a car park with a friend, rehearsing how to work on his mother about a weekend away. He plans the order of arguments, the timing, the mood she needs to be in. He never once plans simply telling her the truth.

That habit is what this verb exposes. The brothers know their father. They know he does not trust them. They do not plan to earn his trust; they plan to get round it.

And the reader, who knows how the last plan with this father ended, feels a chill.

The full entry has 5 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.