Taha · Makki · ayah 25 of 135

Taha 20:25

قَالَ رَبِّ ٱشْرَحْ لِى صَدْرِى

“[Moses] said, "My Lord, expand [i.e., relax] for me my breast [with assurance]”

Saheeh International

Essence

Sent back to the tyrant he fled, Musa asked first not for armies or eloquence, but for a chest wide enough to carry it.

A reflection

Not a prayer for confidence

A trainee teacher stands in a school corridor before her first observed lesson. Her assessor is already in the classroom. She closes her eyes and mouths four words she learned as a child: Rabbi shraḥ lī ṣadrī. Then she walks in, hoping to sound fluent and sure of herself.

That is how most of us use this du'a. A quick prayer before a performance: help me feel confident, help the words come. And there is nothing wrong with asking Allah for that.

But listen to what Musa was actually facing, and what the commentators say he was asking for. He had just been told: go to Pharaoh, for he has transgressed. One great commentator spells it out. Pharaoh was the greatest, most tyrannical king on earth, with the largest armies, who claimed to know no god but himself. And Musa had grown up in his house, then killed one of his people and fled. Now he was being sent back.

So what did 'open my chest' mean in that moment? Another commentator explains. Musa understood he had been given an enormous task, one that only a steady heart and a wide chest could bear. He asked his Lord to make him forbearing and able to carry it. To be, in his words, someone who does not grow agitated or anxious at what human nature is agitated and anxious by.

That is not a request to feel confident. It is a request for capacity: room inside to absorb hostility, rejection, delay and fear, without breaking. Fluency comes two ayat later, when Musa asks about his tongue.

The next time you say these words, ask for the deeper thing. Not 'make me feel strong for an hour'. Rather: give me a chest wide enough for what You have asked of me.

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.