Al-Baqarah · Madani · ayah 151 of 286

Al-Baqarah 2:151

كَمَآ أَرْسَلْنَا فِيكُمْ رَسُولًا مِّنكُمْ يَتْلُوا۟ عَلَيْكُمْ ءَايَـٰتِنَا وَيُزَكِّيكُمْ وَيُعَلِّمُكُمُ ٱلْكِتَـٰبَ وَٱلْحِكْمَةَ وَيُعَلِّمُكُم مَّا لَمْ تَكُونُوا۟ تَعْلَمُونَ

“Just as We have sent among you a messenger from yourselves reciting to you Our verses and purifying you and teaching you the Book and wisdom[54] and teaching you that which you did not know.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Ibrāhīm's prayer answered: a messenger from among you, reciting, purifying and teaching the Book, wisdom, and what you could never have known yourselves.

A reflection

What no one could have worked out

A cardiologist sits beside her father's bed in his last hours. She can read every line on the monitor and name every vessel of his heart. But when he asks her, very quietly, what comes next, she realises she has nothing to say that her training gave her.

The ayah lists what the Messenger ﷺ brought. He recites Our verses. He purifies you. He teaches you the Book and wisdom. Then it adds a separate line: 'and teaches you what you did not know'.

A later commentary notices that the verb 'teaches' is repeated. Had it simply said 'and what you did not know', it would have joined this to what came before. Repeating the verb marks it as a wholly different kind of knowledge: what has no road to it except revelation. A modern commentary gives examples: the stories of the prophets and of nations gone before. Another adds matters of religion and of this life that they did not know.

The same later commentary notes that the ayah speaks in the plural of majesty: 'We sent', 'Our verses'. It signals how great this particular gift is.

This humbles the human mind at its proudest. We can measure the age of stars and map the genome. We cannot discover, by any instrument, why we are here, who made us, or what follows death. Those answers came only one way.

Allah gains nothing from teaching us; He is free of all need (35:15). The knowledge is for us.

The cardiologist held her father's hand and recited the little she knew. It was not hers, and that was what made it enough.

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.