Overall meaning : Allah Almighty informs us that the story of the wife of Egypt’s Chief Minister spread far and wide, and that some women in the city who started talking about it disapprovingly said, 'The Chief Minister’s wife has sought to seduce her servant. She is passionately in love with him. We can see that she is clearly wrong in so doing.’
Having heard of their malicious gossip and taunting comments, she invited them to her house to attend a banquet. She prepared for them a place of reclining and gave each one of them a knife. Then while they were cutting and eating their food, she ordered Joseph to present himself before them. When they saw him, they were so awestruck by his remarkable beauty and attractive manners that they cut their hands, exclaiming, 'Good God! This is not a human being but a noble angel.’
'So now you have seen for yourselves,’ she said to them. 'He is the one you blamed me for. I did indeed try to seduce him and make him yield to me, but he was unyielding and he resolutely refused. Now if he does not do what I order him, he will certainly be thrown into prison and will be utterly disgraced.’
'Lord,’ Joseph prayed, seeking Allah’s protection against their evil guile, 'prison is more desirable to me than the sinful act they are inviting me to commit. Unless You turn their guile away from me and protect me from their cunning devices, I might yield to them and thus be of the foolish.’ Allah thereupon answered Joseph’s prayer and turned away their cunning from him. Surely He is the All-Hearing, who heard and answered Joseph’s prayer and always hears all those who call on Him; the All-Knowing, who was fully aware of Joseph’s needs and what would benefit him, as well as all His creatures’ needs and what will be best for them. In the end the Chief Minister and his advisers thought it best, even after they had seen all the irrefutable proofs of Joseph’s innocence, that they should imprison him for a while until such a time as people forgot about this incident and ceased to talk about it.