Taha · Makki · ayah 37 of 135

Taha 20:37

وَلَقَدْ مَنَنَّا عَلَيْكَ مَرَّةً أُخْرَىٰٓ

“And We had already conferred favor upon you another time,”

Saheeh International

Essence

Before Musa could pray or even remember, his Lord had carried him, and grace that came unasked promises the asked-for.

A reflection

Nobody is self-made

At an awards dinner, a founder takes the stage for a lifetime achievement prize. He tells the room he started with nothing, that nobody ever gave him anything, that every brick was laid by his own hands. The applause is warm. Somewhere in the hall, his elderly mother sits quietly, remembering the second job she took to pay his college fees.

The story of the self-made person is one of the most flattering stories the ego tells. This ayah dismantles it.

Allah has just granted all of Musa's requests. Then He adds, with an oath: wa-laqad manannā ʿalayka marratan ukhrā. And We had already conferred favour on you, another time. One commentator notes the force of the opening. It is as if Allah swears it: by Allah, We did. The favour meant, the commentators explain, was when Musa was a nursing infant, and Allah rescued him from Pharaoh's killing.

Think about Musa's position then. He could not pray. He could not plan. He could not even remember. He was a baby in a basket on a river, in a year when boys were being killed. Every step of his survival, his mother's courage, the current, the palace, the love that softened Pharaoh's household, was given. None of it was earned. None of it was asked for.

The man at the bush, now chosen and commissioned, is reminded where his story actually began. Not with his own strength. With his Lord's grace, before he had any strength at all.

That is the humbling every successful person needs. Look honestly at the first chapters of your life. Who fed you before you could ask? Who kept you alive in the years you do not remember? The ego wants to begin the story at the moment of its own effort. The truth begins much earlier, and it begins with Him.

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.