Taha · Makki · ayah 45 of 135

Taha 20:45

قَالَا رَبَّنَآ إِنَّنَا نَخَافُ أَن يَفْرُطَ عَلَيْنَآ أَوْ أَن يَطْغَىٰ

“They said, "Our Lord, indeed we are afraid that he will hasten [punishment] against us or that he will transgress."”

Saheeh International

Essence

Two prophets, freshly commissioned and promised everything, say the most human thing in the passage: our Lord, we are afraid.

A reflection

Prophets who admitted fear

A thoughtful reader may be troubled. Musa had just been told that every request was granted. His chest was expanded, his task eased, his brother given. Allah had promised to be with them. Now he says: our Lord, we are afraid. Doesn't fear contradict faith? If prophets fear, what was the point of the promises?

The commentators asked this exact question. Wasn't Musa's chest supposed to be opened wide? One answer is that an open chest means not being agitated or crushed by hardship, and meeting it with patience. That is different from feeling no fear. There is no contradiction, the commentator writes, between fearing a thing and bearing it with patience when it comes. Many of the best people fear trials and ask Allah to spare them. When the trial arrives, they meet it with a wide chest.

Picture a mountain guide with twenty years of summits behind her. On the morning of a hard climb she tells her team, quietly, that she is afraid. They are startled. She explains: fear keeps her checking every anchor. What would worry her is a guide who felt nothing. Then she clips in and leads them up.

The Quran never presents faith as the absence of fear. It presents faith as what you do with fear. Musa and Harun did not refuse the mission. They did not invent excuses. They named their fear to the One who had sent them, and then they went.

That corrects a narrow first image. Many believers feel ashamed of their fear, as if it proved weak faith. This ayah shows two prophets afraid in the presence of their Lord.

What remains open is the feeling itself. Fear may not leave. But it can be carried, as theirs was, into the room where the work must be done.

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.