103فَلَمّا أَسلَما وَتَلَّهُ لِلجَبينِMuhammad AsadBut as soon as the two had surrendered themselves to [what they thought to be] the will of God,1 and [Abraham] had laid him down on his face,The above interpolation is, I believe, absolutely necessary for a proper understanding of this passage. As pointed out repeatedly in these notes, the verb aslama signifies, in Qur'anic usage, "he surrendered himself to God", or "to God's will", even if there is no express mention of God; hence, the dual form aslama occurring in the above verse might, on the face of it, have this meaning as well. Since, however, the sequence clearly shows that it was not God's will that Ishmael should be sacrificed, his and his father's "self-surrender to God's will" can have in this context only a purely subjective meaning- namely "to what they thought to be the will of God".