Ayah 15-17 : Evil Deed

             

Ayah 15-17 : Evil Deed

The father is now convinced to let him go, even though he is worried & he is regretting that he reluctantly made that decision. 

فَلَمَّا

Eventually, they are able to pull him away. 

The word لمّا in arabic is for تراخي. You can translate it as “then when” or “so when” but there’s a lot of arabic words in the Quran that translates into the english word “when”. The word لمّا would be closer to “finally when”/ “eventually when”. Inside of this word is a pulling & tugging implied that even after convincing dad it wasn’t easy to get their brother away. 

ذَهَبُوا بِهِ 

When they finally took him away/ did away with him 

وَأَجْمَعُوا أَن يَجْعَلُوهُ فِي غَيَابَتِ الْجُبِّ

And they all came to a consensus/ they gathered around this idea / they ganged up to place him in the depths of the well. 

The word أَجْمَعُوا can mean they all gathered together. They all came to an agreement. 

But we already know from the previous ayah that they agreed. 

They took him away and they are out in the wilderness. One of them suggested killing him. And the other ones started thinking what are they doing? They shouldn’t be doing this. When they took him away, they are having second thoughts now. So they have an Ijma’a again/ they have to reach a consensus again. Okay let’s just decide what we are doing now? 

The other implication is that they all gathered together to do away with him. One or two were grabbing him, pulling him & tugging at him. The others were keeping an eye out. It was like a gang effort. Because he wasn’t quietly going down into a well. They took his shirt away as well. All of them were involved in some way. This is a violent scene!

It’s all captured inside أَجْمَعُوا أَن يَجْعَلُوهُ. They all gathered together to push him inside the well. 

Whenever you say “when” in any language. When they did this, then this happened. If & then sentences and when & then sentences. There’s a when here but no then. That suggests, what they did at that time, the pain they caused, the cries that were heard, the ruthlessness, the evil on their faces, the way they were hypnotized by the devil is so unspeakable that it’s not even said. It’s left blank. 

Can you imagine when they took him away and they all gathered, they manhandled their brother like this & they put him inside the depths of the well. Allah could have just said “the well”. But he said, فِي غَيَابَتِ الْجُبِّ. 

The word غيابة means the dark part of the well. This has already been said before. Why keep mentioning “the dark part of the well”? 

In their head, it’s like “at least we didn’t kill him, so we are not that bad.” But the way Allah expresses this event is like “can you imagine the dark part of the unfinished well? That's what they did to their brother.” By reiterating this phrase, Allah is expressing his disgust at the act. How heinous, merciless & ruthless it was! They all gathered together against a child! To put him in the well! 

The crime took place out in the wilderness where they thought nobody would see them. But Allah is a witness to their crime! 

How traumatized the child would be that his brothers are doing this to him? To calm down this child, Allah said, 

وَأَوْحَيْنَا إِلَيْهِ

We revealed to him/ we inspired him 

While the child is being forced down the whole, the Angel Jibreel AS comes and talks to him. 

لَتُنَبِّئَنَّهُم بِأَمْرِهِمْ هَـٰذَا وَهُمْ لَا يَشْعُرُونَ

You will absolutely be telling him about this one day! What they have done here & they’ll have no idea. 

When a child is hurt in some way, their first impulse is “I’m going to tell dad!” “I’m going to tell mom what happened to me.” And Allah says, no you won’t get that chance as a child but one day you will tell them about what they did. 

وَهُمْ لَا يَشْعُرُونَ

And they are not the ones that have any realization. 

It can mean, 

• Right now, it’s like they are not even in their senses. 
• Secondly, as they are doing this, they have no idea that Jibreel AS is right there too. 
• They have no idea who they are messing with. They are messing with the prophet of Allah. 
• When Yusuf AS would be a minister and would ask them about it, they would have no idea. They would be completely clueless. 

They came to their father at night time crying. 

They came at night time because even if their father said go & find him, they would make excuses about going out & finding him. They came at a time when they couldn’t retrace their steps. 

The other implication is that they are telling their dad “we spent the whole day searching for him but couldn’t find him.” 

So they came home & they pretended crying. But some of them may actually genuinely be crying. It’s a traumatic thing to do what they just did. There’s a part of our humanity we can’t deny even if we are suppressing it. 

They are using those tears to present a picture to their father. 

Now, we are learning about diabolical liars who can fake tears. They would make you feel like the world just came to an end. 

Dad can’t get angry at someone who’s crying. Dad would join them in their tears. They are selling their tears to their father. 

Allah decided that this should be an ayah by itself. The guidance you get from this ayah is that you learn about manipulative people who would go to a great length selling you a convincing story because you are used to giving benefit of the doubt. Because you are not used to questioning someone’s tears. 

Every scene in this story is re-lived in millions of lives over and over again. 

These kinds of people think lying can control the environment. 

They said, Our dad! / O our father! 

إِنَّا ذَهَبْنَا نَسْتَبِقُ

We’re telling you what really happened. The word إِنَّ means certainly. 

O our father! Verily we went racing. 

What really happened was, we actually went racing. نستبق can also mean competing. We were competing hard against one another to get more and more work done. We kept drifting further and further away. That’s captured inside the word ذهبنا. It means ذهبنا يعني بعدنا. 

وَتَرَكْنَا يُوسُفَ عِندَ مَتَاعِنَا

And we left Yusuf with our stuff. 

فَأَكَلَهُ الذِّئْبُ

Here ف means مفاجئة, then all of a sudden, the wolf ate him. 

If there's a pack of wolves, they can drag their prey away. Or if they are devouring, there’s still something left. Wolves aren’t big enough to devour a whole child at once. 

So the story they are coming up with isn’t going to add up. It already doesn’t make any sense. 

وَمَا أَنتَ بِمُؤْمِنٍ لَّنَا وَلَوْ كُنَّا صَادِقِينَ

As they are saying all of that, they are looking for their dad’s reaction. His face may be going from sad & shocked to being upset. And they say, “we know you are not just going to believe us! You are not going to accept what we are saying.”

وَلَوْ كُنَّا صَادِقِينَ

Even if we had been telling the truth. 

The word لو is used for had been. That’s the ظاهر of the text. Had we been telling the truth, you wouldn’t believe us anyway! They are kind of giving it away. Meaning we aren’t telling the truth. 

Dad, you never thought we are truthful anyway! 

Even if you did think we are truthful, this story is too crazy for you to believe. Obviously you won’t believe us now, because you don’t trust us anyway. 

This is rationalization. 

The idea you are not going to believe us, came out way too quickly. Their concern shouldn’t be whether or not he believes them but Yusuf. Why is this the subject right now? Because their priority was never Yusuf. They are trying to make sure he believes them.

Note: You can access the pdf file here