The despair of divine messengers represents one of the principal objections raised against the doctrine of prophetic infallibility (ʿiṣmah), as articulated in verse 110 of Surah Yusuf. Based on this verse, some exegetes and contemporary-minded scholars have contended that prophets, by virtue of their human dimension, may experience despair and hopelessness in the face of divine providence. Regardless of the underlying origins of such interpretations, the verse in question poses considerable hermeneutical difficulties due to its multiplicity of pronouns and ambiguous referents. Consequently, a precise exegesis of this verse, grounded in available contextual indications and the correct understanding of its expressions, appears to be an imperative undertaking.
Employing a descriptive-analytical method, the present article arrives at the conclusion that, although the verse in its wording leaves the object of the messengers' despair unspecified, the contextual evidence from other verses and the prophet’s quotes indicate that the object in question is the faith of the people. Moreover, the identification of the subject of the verb "ẓannū" (they thought) and the variant reading of "kudhibū" (they were lied to / they lied), corroborated by contextual evidence from verses and traditions pertaining to this passage, renders it unequivocal that the despair and the act of denial mentioned in the verse are reciprocal in nature. That is, the messengers despaired of their people's belief, while their people, in turn, despaired of the descent of divine punishment through their persistent denial of the prophets. This is because the literary structure of the verse possesses the capacity to accommodate both semantic dimensions, and the Wise Speaker (al-Mutakallim al-Ḥakīm), through the deliberate creation of structural ambiguity, seeks to convey that, through the despair of both the prophets and their adversaries, divine succor was sent down for the prophets and divine chastisement for the transgressors.