Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of The Glorious Koran. An Explanatory Translation (1930)
discovered that their merchandise had been returned to them. They said: O our father! What (more) can we ask? Here is our merchandise returned to us. We shall get provision for our folk and guard our brother, and we shall have the extra measure of a camel (load). This (that we bring now) is a light measure.
66. He said: I will not send him with you till ye give me an undertaking in the name of Allah that ye will bring him back to me, unless ye are surrounded. And when they gave him their undertaking he said: Allah is the Warden over what we say.
67. And he said: O my sons I Go not in by one gate; go in by different gates. I can naught avail you as against Allah. Lo! the decision rests with Allah only. In Him do I put my trust, and in Him let all the trusting put their trust,
68. And when they entered in the manner which their father had enjoined, it would have naught availed them as against Allah; it was but a need of Jacob’s soul which he thus satisfied 1; and lo! he was a lord of knowledge because We had taught him; but most of mankind know not.
69. And when they went in before Joseph, he took his brother unto himself, saying: Lo! I, even I, am thy brother, therefore sorrow not for what they did.
70. And when he provided them with their provision, he put the drinking-cup in his brother’s saddlebag, and then a crier cried: O camel-riders! Ye are surely thieves!
71. They cried, coming toward them: What is it ye have lost?
72. They said: We have lost the king’s cup, and he who bringeth it shall have a camel-load, and I (said Joseph) am answerable for it.
1 There is a prevalent superstition in the East that the members of a large family ought not to appear all together, for fear of the ill luck that comes from envy in the hearts of others.
