Yusuf · Makki · ayah 95 of 111

Yusuf 12:95

قَالُوا۟ تَٱللَّهِ إِنَّكَ لَفِى ضَلَـٰلِكَ ٱلْقَدِيمِ

“They said, "By Allāh, indeed you are in your [same] old error."”

Saheeh International

Essence

The family swears that Ya'qub is lost in his old error, and the error they mean is a love that never let go of Yusuf.

A reflection

The error was love

The word ḍalāl usually reaches a Muslim reader with a heavy meaning. Going astray. Misguidance. The opposite of the straight path. So this ayah can sound like an accusation of something grave: by Allah, you are in your old misguidance.

The commentaries read it quite differently. What error did they mean? A concise commentary says: your excessive love for him, and your hope of meeting him after so long. An early commentator glosses it: from love of Yusuf, you neither forget him nor take comfort. Another says simply that ḍalāl here means love. Another reads it as misery, the old suffering he will not leave.

So the charge is not that Ya'qub has lost his faith. It is that he has lost his realism. He loves too much and hopes too long, and the people around him have run out of patience with it.

That changes how the ayah lands. They are calling him mad for exactly the thing that is about to be vindicated. Within a day, the bearer of good news will arrive. The love they called an error is the only accurate reading of the situation anyone in that house has had.

It is worth noticing how often love is called error by people who do not share it. A mother is told she is in denial. A husband is told he is blind. A believer is told he is clinging to a story.

Sometimes they are right. Here, they were not. And the ayah does not settle which is which by the volume of the accusation. It lets the next ayah settle it.

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.