Al-Kahf · Makki · ayah 65 of 110

Al-Kahf 18:65

فَوَجَدَا عَبْدًا مِّنْ عِبَادِنَآ ءَاتَيْنَـٰهُ رَحْمَةً مِّنْ عِندِنَا وَعَلَّمْنَـٰهُ مِن لَّدُنَّا عِلْمًا

“And they found a servant from among Our servants [i.e., al-Khiḍr] to whom We had given mercy from Us and had taught him from Us a [certain] knowledge.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Four phrases describe the most famous teacher in the surah, and three of them are possessives belonging to somebody else.

A reflection

Count how little of him is his

Read the verse as an inventory and see what the man owns.

A servant: not his own. Among Our servants: not his own. Mercy We gave him: not his own, and the source is named twice over. Knowledge We taught him: not his own either, and the verse says where it came from before it says what it was.

Four descriptions, and not one of them is a property of the man.

This is the figure the whole journey was for. A prophet walked until he was given fatigue to tell him he had gone too far. What he found at the end is described entirely in terms of what was handed to it.

In one county a ploughman took the championship three years running. The horses were his employer's. The plough belonged to the estate. The field was rented. He had the hands and the eye, and he had been given those too.

Nobody thought less of him for it. The judging was real. What nobody pretended was that the win came out of nothing.

The ego does not usually claim to have made itself. It does something subtler. It accepts that the gifts were given, and then quietly treats the arrangement of them as the achievement.

This verse removes even that. It does not say he gathered knowledge, studied, or sought. It says We taught him.

And the arrangement is not an insult. It is the only reason the knowledge is worth crossing a country for. A man who had worked it out himself would be a man whose conclusions could be argued with.

What Musa is about to be shown cannot be argued with, and that is exactly because none of it belongs to the man showing it.

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.