But I will send them a gift and see what the envoys bring back (in return)."
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Tafseer
'Abdullāh Ibn 'Abbās / Muḥammad al-Fīrūzabādī
تفسير : (but lo! i am going to send a present unto them) to solomon, (and to see with what (answer) the messengers return.
Jalāl al-Dīn al-Maḥallī
تفسير : now i will send them a gift and wait to see with what [response] the envoys return’, in the way of accepting the gift or rejecting it. if it be a king [to whom we have sent it], he will accept it; but if it be a prophet, he will reject it. thus, she sent male and female servants, one thousand in total, together with five hundred bricks of gold, a crown studded with jewels, and musk, ambergris and other things with an envoy carrying a letter. the hoopoe thus hurried back to bring the news to solomon, who ordered bricks of gold and silver to be made and laid out across a [vast] square the distance of nine parasangs from his seat and for a towering wall of gold and silver to be constructed around it, and for the most splendid creatures of the land and the sea, together with the children of the jinn, to be brought to line the right and left sides of the square.
