And as for the wall it belonged to two orphan boys who lived in the city and beneath it there was a treasure a buried trove of gold and silver belonging to them. Their father had been a righteous man and so because of his righteousness they were protected both in terms of their souls and their possessions and your Lord desired that they should come of age that is He desired for them the attainment of maturity and extract their treasure as a mercy from your Lord rahmatan min rabbik is a direct object denoting reason operated by the verb arāda ‘He desired’. And I did not do it namely what has been mentioned of his making a hole in the ship the slaying of the boy and the repair of the wall of my own accord that is out of my own choosing; nay it was because of a command in the form of an inspiration from God. This is the interpretation of that over which you could not maintain patience’ one may say istā‘a or istatā‘a to mean ‘he had the capacity for something’; in this instance and the previous one both forms of the verb have been used. Moreover there is a variety of expression in the use of fa-aradtu ‘I desired’ fa-aradnā ‘We desired’ and fa-arāda rabbuk ‘Your Lord desired’.
