The chapter
A caravan lowered its bucket into the well and drew up a boy. "Good news, a boy!" They sold him in Egypt "for a low price, a few dirhams, and they were, concerning him, of those content with little." Heaven's appraisal differed: "Thus We established Yusuf in the land, and to teach him the interpretation of events. And Allah is predominant over His affair, but most people do not know." The sentence is the thesis of the entire surah: every hand that moved Yusuf, jealous brothers, opportunist traders, a purchasing minister, was, without knowing it, a courier of the decree.
In the house of the Aziz he grew into striking beauty, and the trial changed shape: from hatred to desire. The minister's wife locked the doors and said "Come." The Qur'an, with complete frankness and complete purity, records the moment: "She was determined on him, and he would have inclined to her had he not seen the proof of his Lord." He ran for the door; she tore his shirt from behind; and at the door stood her husband. A witness from her own family spoke the forensic verdict the Codex loves for its clean logic: if the shirt is torn from the front, she is truthful; from behind, she is lying. It was torn from behind.
The scandal spread among the women of the city, so she staged the famous scene: a banquet, knives in every hand, and Yusuf ordered to walk in. "When they saw him they exalted him and cut their hands and said: Perfect is Allah, this is no mortal." Vindicated as irresistible, he was threatened again, and answered with the du'a that gives this node its title: "My Lord, prison is dearer to me than that to which they invite me; and if You do not avert their plot from me, I might incline toward them and be of the ignorant." He did not claim strength; he asked for rescue from his own inclination. That honesty is the summit of taqwa.
So the innocent went to prison, and turned the prison into a school of tawhid. Two inmates brought him their dreams; before interpreting, he preached: "Are separate lords better, or Allah, the One, the Prevailing?" He asked the one due for release to mention him to the king, and was forgotten, "so he remained in prison several years." The Prophet ﷺ, with characteristic humility, honored that endurance: "If I had remained in prison as long as Yusuf, I would have answered the summoner at once."
The dream of eleven stars was still climbing. Next: the king's dream, the storehouses, and the reunion.