Send him with us tomorrow, that he may eat and play, and of course, we will remain as guards for him.
Surah Yusuf #12
TAFSEER
They are saying, “Why don’t you trust us while we have so much love for him?
Tomorrow we are going on a picnic and on a time to have fun, so send him with us tomorrow.” In another qira’a: “Either we will [or he will] have fun, play, and we will eat.” The reason they say this is they mean that they are going to enjoy a bountiful, luscious meal.
They are going to play. This shows us that playing and having a good time is something that is halal in our religion if it doesn’t go to an extreme. La‘ib means to play, and lahu means pastime and amusement. La‘ib is something that you do which is not as serious and not as noble as other things but is permissible in moderate quantities. Lahu is a complete waste of time, and there is no benefit whatsoever in it.
These are the children of a prophet, grandchildren of a prophet, and great-grandchildren of a prophet, and they are saying that they are going to play. Some people make Islam way stricter than it is and say, ‘you should not be playing’ or ‘the masjid should not organize a play event’ or ‘if you are an adult, then you have to have a very serious mannerism and cannot have fun with the children.’
They are adults and children of a prophet and eventually become prophets. They are saying that they want to go play. This clearly shows that a little bit of moderate quantity of playing is something that is healthy and a requirement of life. You cannot live without a little bit of playing.
They say, “Send him with us tomorrow. We will eat lots of food, and we will play.”
The reason they are telling this to their father is: “Don’t you want Yusuf to enjoy as well? We are going to have a fun time. If you really love Yusuf…” This is emotional blackmail and turning the tables. First, they make him feel guilty by saying, “Why don’t you trust us? We are his brothers. What is your problem? Now they add the icing on the cake. “We are having a good time, why don’t you want to send Yusuf? We are going to have good food, and he is going to play. Don’t you want him to be happy?” Then to emphasize that point: “Of course, surely we will protect him.
The highest possible way of emphasis in Arabic called tawkeed. Tawkeed is to emphasize. We don’t emphasize in English anymore, but in Arabic there is still emphasis. You can have single emphasis, double emphasis, or triple emphasis. Generally the highest is triple emphasis.
This is triple emphasis: inna, laam, and laam with the dhameer [and the reason the ‘la‘-hu here is emphatic is it is munfasil muqaddim, so we could say innaa nahfadhuhu ‘we will protect him’ where it is mutassil (connected), and when we take this dhameer and separate it, putting it before we are adding emphasis and now the meaning reads ‘of a surety, him we will protect / we will make extra protection of him.’
If you don’t understand any Arabic, you will understand one thing. When Allah mentions that He will protect the Qur’an, He uses the exact same wording: inna nahnu nazzalnaa’l-dhikra wa inna lahu lahafidhoon [15:9]. This is the exact same wording that the brothers of Yusuf are saying, meaning they couldn’t have said it more powerfully.
Notice the previous verse says ‘inna lahu lanaasihoon,’ and this verse says ‘inna lahu lahaafidhoon.’ Naasihoon means ‘we want good for him’ and hafidhoonmeans ‘we will protect him from other evil.’ They have shot down all excuses of Ya‘qub, and there are no excuses left. “We want good for him and will protect him from external evil.” There is no evil internal because we are naasihoon, and there is no evil external because we are haafidhoon.
Now that they have eliminated all excuses, Ya‘qub could have said, ‘Okay, khalasgo,’ but there is still something in this heart, which is instinct, and in Arabic the word is firasah. The Prophet (sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam) said, “Beware of the firasah of the believer because it is true.” What does firasah mean? We can translate it in English as a gut instinct or something that you sense – for the kids here, it is ‘spider sense’; some tingling goes off. You know something is wrong. This is a type of firasah.
The more iman that you have, the more you will have this firasah. It is an instinct, so you keep it internal. You cannot say it to anybody. You cannot base your judgment that ‘I think this.’ Firasah is an internal thing and you do not mention it to other people.
Ya‘qub has this firasah because he is a prophet, and he knows that something is not right. He could have said after this beautiful introduction of the children, “What excuse do you have?” He still makes another attempt, and this really shows his concern. Not once has he ever handed Yusuf over to them, and never has he allowed Yusuf to be alone with them without his supervision. Now that they have laid it this way, he tries one more thing.
LESSON:
the believer’s firāsa is true. Firāsa means intuition and a gut instinct. We believe that a gut instinct is something Allāh sometimes blesses you with. The more righteous you are, the more your moral compass and gut instinct will be rightly guided. Ya‘qūb knew something was wrong. There was no solid evidence, but his heart is telling him, “My kids are up to no good, and something is wrong. You cannot use this to charge anybody with a crime and cannot use it in a court of law. If something doesn’t feel right and if this is from Allāh ‘azza wa jall, then there is a reality to it. As we said, the closer you are to Allāh, the more true your intuition is going to be. This is a blessing of being close to Allāh that your intuition will then be rightly guided