Taha · Makki · ayah 78 of 135

Taha 20:78

فَأَتْبَعَهُمْ فِرْعَوْنُ بِجُنُودِهِۦ فَغَشِيَهُم مِّنَ ٱلْيَمِّ مَا غَشِيَهُمْ

“So Pharaoh pursued them with his soldiers, and there covered them from the sea that which covered them,[845]”

Saheeh International

Essence

Pharaoh drove his army after the fleeing slaves into the open sea, and the water covered them with something too vast for words to name.

A reflection

What covered them

A woman survived a great flood that swept through her town. Years later a journalist asks her what it was like. She is quiet for a long time. Then she says only: the water came. Nothing she could add would be bigger than those three words.

The ayah describes the end of Pharaoh's army in a phrase that refuses to describe it: fa-ghashiyahum mina al-yammi mā ghashiyahum. And there covered them, from the sea, what covered them.

One classical commentator calls this an example of concise, comprehensive speech: few words that carry vast meaning on their own. It means, he says, that what covered them was something whose true nature only Allah knows. Another commentator says the vagueness is deliberate: it magnifies the event, because it was beyond understanding and beyond description. A third compares it to a similar phrase elsewhere, used for something so well known it needs no description.

The root of ghashiya has a vivid picture. A cover thrown over a saddle. Something that comes down and wraps a thing whole.

There is a wisdom in this restraint. Human storytellers would linger: the walls of water, the screaming horses, the drowning men. The Quran draws a veil over it. It tells you only that the sea came down over them, and that what happened was beyond words.

That restraint invites a different response from the reader. Not entertainment, not vengeance, but awe. A recognition that there are events in which the power of Allah is so total that language falls silent.

We will each meet moments like that: a birth, a death, a rescue, a loss. When words fail you, you are not failing. You are standing where the Quran itself chose silence.

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.