Al-Kahf · Makki · ayah 68 of 110

Al-Kahf 18:68

وَكَيْفَ تَصْبِرُ عَلَىٰ مَا لَمْ تُحِطْ بِهِۦ خُبْرًا

“And how can you have patience for what you do not encompass in knowledge?"”

Saheeh International

Essence

A bird dipped its beak in the sea, and the teacher said that was the share both their knowledges took from Allah's.

A reflection

A beak dipped in the sea

Sahih al-Bukhari gives the scene that goes with this sentence, and it is the smallest gesture in the surah.

They were in the boat. A bird landed on the edge of it and dipped its beak into the water, once, perhaps twice.

The man turned to Musa and said something very short. Our two knowledges, beside the knowledge of Allah, are only what this bird has taken from this sea.

One version widens it further. My knowledge and your knowledge and the knowledge of all created things.

So the comparison is not between a prophet and a scholar. It is between everything anybody has ever known and one beakful of salt water.

And the sea was right there. He did not describe it. He let a bird demonstrate it.

The ego has no footing on that deck. Not because it is scolded, but because the scale is wrong by a factor nobody can picture. A man can accept that he knows less than another man, and still feel himself somewhere on a ladder.

This removes the ladder. Two men at the top of what human knowledge contains, measured together, come to a bird's mouthful.

A working chart will have a sector with no soundings in it. The surveyors print the word across the blank, so nobody mistakes white for safe. That honesty is the whole value of the chart.

The verse is printing that word across the man who has just asked to be taught.

And the one who holds the rest of it does not need to say so. He sends a bird.

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.