60 Preface وَإِذ قالَ موسىٰ لِفَتاهُ لا أَبرَحُ حَتّىٰ أَبلُغَ مَجمَعَ البَحرَينِ أَو أَمضِيَ حُقُبًاYusuf AliBehold, Moses said1 to his attendant, “I will not give up until I reach the junction of the two2 seas or (until) I spend years and years in travel.”3This episode in the story of Moses is meant to illustrate four points. (1) Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. Even so that wisdom did not comprehend everything, even as the whole stock of the knowledge of the present day, the sciences and the arts, and in literature, (if it could be supposed to be gathered in one individual), does not include all knowledge. Divine knowledge, as far as man is concerned, is unlimited. Even after Moses received his divine mission, his knowledge was not so perfect that it could not receive further additions. (2) Constant effort is necessary to keep our knowledge square with the march of time, and such effort Moses is shown to be making. (3) The mysterious man he meets (18:65 and n. 2411), to whom Tradition assigns the name of Khidr (literally, Green), is the type of that knowledge which is ever in contact with life as it is actually lived. (4) There are paradoxes in life: apparent loss may be real gain; apparent cruelty maybe real mercy; returning good for evil may really be justice and not generosity (18:79-82). God’s wisdom transcends all human calculation. (R).The most probable geographical location (if any is required in a story that is a parable) is where the two arms of the Red Sea join together, viz., the Gulf of 'Aqabah and the Gulf of Suez. They enclose the Sinai Peninsula, in which Moses and the Israelites spent many years in their wanderings. There is also authority (see Baydawf’s note) for interpreting the two seas as the two great streams of knowledge, which were to meet in the persons of Moses and Khidr.Huqub means a long but indefinite space of time. Sometimes it is limited to 80 years.