When the old man had offered Moses hospitality, honored his stay, and heard everything that had happened to him, he assured him that he was now safe. At that point one of the two daughters said to her father, “O my father, hire him,” that is, appoint him to tend your sheep, and she commended him as being strong and trustworthy.
ʿAmr (1), Ibn ʿAbbās, Shurayḥ the judge, Abū Mālik, Qatādah, Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq, and others relate that when she said this her father asked, “How do you know that?” She replied, “He lifted a rock that only ten men together could have lifted. And when I came with him I walked in front of him, whereupon he said, ‘Walk behind me; if the road forks, throw a pebble so I will know which way to go.’ ”
Ibn Masʿūd said, “The three people with the keenest insight are: the man who bought Joseph and said to his wife, ‘Treat him honorably’ (Yūsuf 12:21); the woman who spoke of Moses when she said, ‘O my father, hire him. For the best man you can hire is the one who is strong and trustworthy’; and Abū Bakr when he appointed ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb.” (3)
[The father] then said, “I wish to marry you to one of these two daughters of mine on condition that you work for me eight years; but if you complete ten, that will be of your own accord” (al-Qaṣaṣ 28:27).
Some of Abū Ḥanīfah’s companions used this verse as proof that a sale is valid when a person says, for example, “I sell you one of these two slaves” or “one of these two garments,” arguing from the phrase, “one of these two daughters of mine.” Yet this is debatable, for the statement here is merely an offer, not a finalized contract. God knows best.
The Ḥanbalī jurists, by contrast, cite the passage as evidence that hiring someone for food and clothing—as common practice allows—is permissible. They also adduce the ḥadīth transmitted by Ibn Mājah in his Sunan, who titles a chapter (4) “Hiring a laborer for his food.” He relates it through Muḥammad ibn Muṣaffā (5) of Ḥimṣ, from Baqiyyah ibn al-Walīd, from Maslamah ibn ʿAlī, from Saʿīd ibn Abī Ayyūb, from al-Ḥārith ibn Yazīd, from ʿAlī ibn Rabāḥ, who said: I heard ʿUtbah ibn al-Nadhdhār (6) say, “We were with …"