Taha · Makki · ayah 52 of 135

Taha 20:52

قَالَ عِلْمُهَا عِندَ رَبِّى فِى كِتَـٰبٍ ۖ لَّا يَضِلُّ رَبِّى وَلَا يَنسَى

“[Moses] said, "The knowledge thereof is with my Lord in a record. My Lord neither errs nor forgets."”

Saheeh International

Essence

Pressed about the vanished generations, Musa answers with what he does not know and Who does: my Lord neither loses track nor forgets.

A reflection

Knowledge without the two flaws

An eminent historian, honoured for a lifetime of scholarship, sits at a dinner in his honour. Someone asks him about his first book. He opens his mouth, and the title will not come. He laughs it off. Later, alone, he is shaken. Everything he knew is held in a mind that is starting to let go.

One commentator names the two flaws that afflict all human knowledge. The first is that it never encompasses everything. The second is that it forgets what it once knew. In this ayah, Musa declares his Lord free of both. ʿIlmuhā ʿinda rabbī fī kitābin, lā yaḍillu rabbī wa-lā yansā. Their knowledge is with my Lord, in a record; my Lord neither misses anything nor forgets.

Another commentator hears an edge in it, aimed at the man listening. He does not err as you err, he paraphrases, nor forget as you forget, O you who claim lordship in ignorance and insolence. Pharaoh, the self-declared god, was as forgetful and as partial in knowledge as any man.

That is how majesty humbles the ego. The pride of the expert, the confidence of the well-informed, the reputation built on knowing: all of it rests on a fragile mind. It cannot see everything, and is already losing some of what it holds. The historian at the dinner is every one of us, a little later.

Is it vanity for Allah to be described this way? He gains nothing from the description (35:15). It is told so that we stop leaning our full weight on what we know. We lean instead on the One whose knowledge has no edges and no fading.

There is rest in that. You do not have to know everything, or remember everything. He does.

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.