The Cave
IN THE NAME OF GOD, THE MOST GRACIOUS, THE DISPENSER OF GRACE[18:22]
[And in times to come] some will say, "[They were] three, the fourth of them being their dog," while others will say, "Five, with their dog as the sixth of them" – idly guessing at something of which they can have no knowledge – and [so on, until] some will say, "[They were] seven, the eighth of them being their dog."
Say: "My Sustainer knows best how many they were. None but a few have any [real] knowledge of them. Hence, do not argue about them otherwise than by way of an obvious argument, and do not ask any of those [storytellers] to enlighten thee about them."

---

* v.22 : The future tense in sayaqūlūn points once again to the legendary character of the story as such, and implies that all speculation about its details is irrelevant to its parabolic, ethical purport.
* I.e., for the sake of the self-evident ethical lesson to be derived from their story: an allusion to the first paragraph of verse 21 above.