• Another lesson: the dazzling beauty with which Joseph was endowed, both outwardly and inwardly.

– His outward beauty drove the wife of the chief minister to excessive, passionate love and to relentless attempts at seduction. When the women reproached her, she invited them, “She prepared couches for them, placed a knife in the hand of each one, and said, ‘Come out before them.’ When they saw him, they were so awestruck that they cut their hands and exclaimed, ‘Glory be to Allah! This is no mortal; he is nothing but a noble angel.’” (12:31).

– His inward beauty lay in the magnificent chastity he maintained despite the many motives that might have led him into wrongdoing. When faith and its light, together with sincerity and its strength, settle in a heart, no virtue escapes them and no vice can remain alongside them.

The wife of the minister showed the women both aspects. After letting them behold his outward beauty—so exceptional that they admitted no human could possess the like—she said, “I tried to entice him, but he held himself back” (12:32). Later she declared, “Now the truth has come to light: it was I who sought to seduce him, and he is surely among the truthful” (12:51).

• Another lesson: Joseph chose prison over sin. Likewise, when a servant is forced to choose between committing a sin and facing a worldly punishment, he must prefer the worldly punishment, for it brings reward from several angles:

– A reward for preferring faith to personal safety from worldly retribution;
– A reward because such hardship purifies and refines the believer, and counts as a form of jihad in the path of Allah;
– And a reward that comes from the very misfortune and pain he endures.