Taha · Makki · ayah 81 of 135

Taha 20:81

كُلُوا۟ مِن طَيِّبَـٰتِ مَا رَزَقْنَـٰكُمْ وَلَا تَطْغَوْا۟ فِيهِ فَيَحِلَّ عَلَيْكُمْ غَضَبِى ۖ وَمَن يَحْلِلْ عَلَيْهِ غَضَبِى فَقَدْ هَوَىٰ

“[Saying], "Eat from the good things with which We have provided you and do not transgress [or oppress others] therein, lest My anger should descend upon you. And he upon whom My anger descends has certainly fallen [i.e., perished]."”

Saheeh International

Essence

Eat freely from what He gave, but do not let the gift flood its banks: abundance is the season in which people fall furthest.

A reflection

Every plate is a ration handed out

Eat from the good things We have provided you. The verb is razaqnākum, and the lexicons give it a sharp first picture. A commander razaqa his troops when he handed out their ration on its appointed day. A bird razaqa its chick when it dropped food into the open beak. The word is established in that sense: a gift that keeps arriving, on time, from someone above you.

The Children of Israel could hardly miss it. They had just walked out of the sea. Now food came down to them in a wilderness where nothing grew. A narration-based commentary describes the manna as a sweetness that settled from the sky, and the quail as birds that came down among them. They gathered each day what they needed until the next. Two commentaries add a detail that matters: this was food no human hand had made. Nobody could claim to have grown it.

That is the ego's problem with provision. Most of what reaches us passes through human hands first, and the last pair of hands is usually our own. So we start to believe the ration was self-made.

Picture a man on the first of the month. His salary lands in his account, as it has for nineteen years, and he thinks of it as simply his. He does not think of the rain that grew the wheat in his toast. He does not think of the health that got him to his desk, or the mind that still works. He stands at the end of a long line of gifts and calls himself the source.

The ayah does not flatter that man. It says, in effect: you are a soldier in a queue, and the ration is from Us. There is no humiliation in this. There is relief. The one who hands out the ration does not run short, and does not forget the day.

Arrogance is forgetting where the queue begins. Gratitude is remembering it, plate by plate.

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.