Verse. 1677

١٢ - يُوسُف

12 - Yusuf

اِرْجِعُوْۗا اِلٰۗى اَبِيْكُمْ فَقُوْلُوْا يٰۗاَبَانَاۗ اِنَّ ابْنَكَ سَرَقَ۝۰ۚ وَمَا شَہِدْنَاۗ اِلَّا بِمَا عَلِمْنَا وَمَا كُنَّا لِلْغَيْبِ حٰفِظِيْنَ۝۸۱
IrjiAAoo ila abeekum faqooloo ya abana inna ibnaka saraqa wama shahidna illa bima AAalimna wama kunna lilghaybi hafitheena

English

Ahmed Ali

So, go to your father and tell him: 'O father, your son has committed a theft. We bear witness to only what we know; we could not prevent the unknown.

81

Tafseer

'Abdullāh Ibn 'Abbās / Muḥammad al-Fīrūzabādī

تفسير : judah then said: (return) o my brothers (unto your father and say: o our father! lo! thy son hath stolen) the king's golden cup; it is also said that this means: your son was taken for stealing. (we testify only to that which we know) we saw the stolen cup found in his bag; (we are not guardians of the unseen) he said: if we knew the unseen, we would not have taken him; it is also said that this means: we could not look after him at night.

Jalāl al-Dīn al-Maḥallī

تفسير : go back to your father and say, “o our father, your son has indeed stolen and we testified, against him, only regarding what we knew, from the certainty of having seen the [king’s] cup in his saddlebag; we could not have guarded against the unseen, that which was hidden from us, when we gave our pledge: had we known that he would steal, we would not have taken him [with us to egypt].