Maarif-ul-Quran (En) - Al-Kahf : 74
فَانْطَلَقَا١ٙ حَتّٰۤى اِذَا لَقِیَا غُلٰمًا فَقَتَلَهٗ١ۙ قَالَ اَقَتَلْتَ نَفْسًا زَكِیَّةًۢ بِغَیْرِ نَفْسٍ١ؕ لَقَدْ جِئْتَ شَیْئًا نُّكْرًا
So, they moved ahead until when they met a boy, he killed him (the boy). He (Musa) said, 'Did you kill an innocent person in retaliation of nobody? You have done something abominable indeed."
We now move to the sentence: حَتَّىٰ إِذَا لَقِيَا غُلَامًا (until when they met a boy -74). The word: غُلَام (ghulam) in the text is used for a minor boy in the Arabic usage. This boy killed by al-Khadir (علیہ السلام) was a minor - as corroborated by Sayyidna Ibn ` Abbas ؓ and most commentators. Further on, when the words: نَفْسًا زَكِيَّةً (innocent person) were used for him, that too supports the view that he was a minor. The reason is that زَكِيَّةً (zakiyyah) means 'free of sin' and it can be either the attribute of a prophet or a minor child who faces no accounting for what is done by him and no sin is written in his Book of Deeds.
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