Al-Kahf · Makki · ayah 60 of 110

Al-Kahf 18:60

وَإِذْ قَالَ مُوسَىٰ لِفَتَىٰهُ لَآ أَبْرَحُ حَتَّىٰٓ أَبْلُغَ مَجْمَعَ ٱلْبَحْرَيْنِ أَوْ أَمْضِىَ حُقُبًا

“And [mention] when Moses said to his boy [i.e., servant], "I will not cease [traveling] until I reach the junction of the two seas or continue for a long period."”

Saheeh International

Essence

The word for the age he would travel is a saddlebag tied behind the rider, holding whatever was packed into it.

A reflection

A whole journey out of one answer

The verse begins in the middle of something, and the sound narrations supply the beginning.

Sahih al-Bukhari records that Musa stood up to address the Children of Israel and was asked which of the people is the most knowledgeable. He said that he was. The narration then states the consequence plainly. Allah held it against him, because he did not refer the knowledge back to Him.

So the answer was not even false in a simple sense. He was a prophet, with the Torah in his hand and revelation arriving. The fault was in the direction of the sentence.

Then came the correction: I have a servant at the junction of the two seas who knows more than you.

Notice what Allah did not do. He did not inform Musa of the missing knowledge. He sent him to walk for it.

There is a sheepdog handler who had won everything his region had to offer. An older man told him to spend a week with a shepherd two valleys away. That shepherd had never entered a trial in his life. He went. He said afterwards that he had spent fifteen years perfecting the part of the work that the other man did without thinking about it.

That is as close as a human picture gets, and it is still too small, because the handler could have refused.

The ego's quiet assumption is that competence is a ranking, and that the top of the ranking is the top. The verse opens with the best-informed man alive being told that his position in the ranking is not the point. The knowledge was never his to be ranked by.

It had been given to him. Somewhere down a coast it had been given to somebody else, differently.

And the one who distributed it is not in the ranking at all.

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.