Taha · Makki · ayah 47 of 135

Taha 20:47

فَأْتِيَاهُ فَقُولَآ إِنَّا رَسُولَا رَبِّكَ فَأَرْسِلْ مَعَنَا بَنِىٓ إِسْرَٰٓءِيلَ وَلَا تُعَذِّبْهُمْ ۖ قَدْ جِئْنَـٰكَ بِـَٔايَةٍ مِّن رَّبِّكَ ۖ وَٱلسَّلَـٰمُ عَلَىٰ مَنِ ٱتَّبَعَ ٱلْهُدَىٰٓ

“So go to him and say, 'Indeed, we are messengers of your Lord, so send with us the Children of Israel and do not torment them. We have come to you with a sign from your Lord. And peace[838] will be upon he who follows the guidance.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The first demand of the message was not about ritual but about people: let them go, and stop tormenting them.

A reflection

Faith that begins with the oppressed

In a farming region, every summer, a crew of seasonal fruit pickers arrives. They sleep in a converted barn, thirty bunks to a room. The rent for the bunks is taken from wages they never actually see. They work from dawn until the light goes, and they are told they are lucky to have the work.

When Musa and Harun walked into Pharaoh's court, the first concrete demand they made was about people like that. Fa-arsil maʿanā banī Isrāʾīl wa-lā tuʿadhdhibhum: send the Children of Israel with us, and do not torment them.

The commentators describe what the torment was. The Children of Israel were held under Egyptian control and forced into the hardest labour. They dug, built, carried stone and made clay bricks, raising cities beyond their strength. Their sons were killed in alternate years, their women put to service.

One commentator asks why the brothers began with the release of the slaves rather than with a call to faith. Perhaps, he suggests, for gradualness in the call: releasing captives is a smaller step than changing a belief. Others said that freeing the believers from oppressors was the more urgent matter. The surah of An-Naziat shows the call to faith too (79:18-19). But here, in Ta-Ha, the oppressed come first.

That breaks a narrow image of religion. Many assume it is only private belief and ritual, with nothing to say about how people are treated. In this passage, the message of the Lord of the worlds walks into a palace and names a labour injustice before anything else.

Wherever people are worked beyond their strength and robbed of their wages, the brothers' words still apply. Let them go. Stop tormenting them. A believer cannot read this ayah and look away from the barn.

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.