Taha · Makki · ayah 121 of 135

Taha 20:121

فَأَكَلَا مِنْهَا فَبَدَتْ لَهُمَا سَوْءَٰتُهُمَا وَطَفِقَا يَخْصِفَانِ عَلَيْهِمَا مِن وَرَقِ ٱلْجَنَّةِ ۚ وَعَصَىٰٓ ءَادَمُ رَبَّهُۥ فَغَوَىٰ

“And they [i.e., Adam and his wife] ate of it, and their private parts became apparent to them, and they began to fasten over themselves from the leaves of Paradise. And Adam disobeyed his Lord and erred.”

Saheeh International

Essence

They ate, saw themselves uncovered, and began stitching leaves like a cobbler: the first sin, the first shame, the first useless patch.

A reflection

He disobeyed; he is not ‘the disobedient one’

The ayah says it plainly: wa-ʿaṣā ādamu rabbahu, Adam disobeyed his Lord. But the commentaries record a careful distinction drawn by early scholars of the language.

You may say Adam disobeyed. You may not call him ʿāṣin, 'a disobedient one'. One early grammarian explained it with a homely picture. A man who sews his garment once can be said to have sewn it. He is not called a tailor until he does it again and again and is known for it. Adam's lapse happened once. It describes something he did, not what he was.

Another classical commentator adds a second point. After Allah accepted his repentance and honoured him, it would be wrong to label him by that act. In the same way, a believer who once drank or stole and then truly repented is not afterwards called a drunkard or a thief.

Picture a boy who, in his first week of secondary school, loses his temper and swears at a teacher in front of the class. He is excluded for a day. Four years later he is a quiet, hardworking sixteen-year-old who helps in the library. But some of the older staff still call him 'that boy' in the staffroom. One act from when he was eleven has become his name.

Most of us do this to others, and many do it to themselves. One lie, and I am a liar. One failure, and I am a failure. The ayah's language refuses that. It names the act honestly, in stark words, and then, in the very next ayah, his Lord chooses him (20:122).

So hold the line the scholars held. Call a wrong a wrong; do not soften it. But do not turn a person's single act into their identity, especially after they have turned back. That goes for the people you know. And it goes for the one in the mirror.

The full entry has 5 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.