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He replied, ‘Did I not tell you that you would never be able to bear with me patiently?’

Moses said, ‘From now on, if I query anything you do, banish me from your company- you have put up with enough from me.’

And so they travelled on. Then, when they came to a town and asked the inhabitants for food but were refused hospitality, they saw a wall there that was on the point of falling down and the man repaired it. Moses said, ‘But if you had wished you could have taken payment for doing that.’

He said, ‘This is where you and I part company. I will tell you the meaning of the things you could not bear with patiently:

the boat belonged to some needy people who made their living from the sea and I damaged it because I knew that coming after them was a king who was seizing every [serviceable] boat by force.

The young boy had parents who were people of faith, and so, fearing he would trouble them through wickedness and disbelief,

we wished that their Lord should give them another child- purer and more compassionate- in his place.

The wall belonged to two young orphans in the town and there was buried treasure beneath it belonging to them. Their father had been a righteous man, so your Lord intended them to reach maturity and then dig up their treasure as a mercy from your Lord. I did not do [these things] of my own accord: these are the explanations for those things you could not bear with patience.’

[Prophet], they ask you about Dhu ’l-Qarnayn. Say, ‘I will tell you something about him.’