Taha · Makki · ayah 82 of 135

Taha 20:82

وَإِنِّى لَغَفَّارٌ لِّمَن تَابَ وَءَامَنَ وَعَمِلَ صَـٰلِحًا ثُمَّ ٱهْتَدَىٰ

“But indeed, I am the Perpetual Forgiver of whoever repents and believes and does righteousness and then continues in guidance.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Straight after the warning of a fall, the door: He forgives again and again whoever comes home, believes, repairs, and then keeps walking.

A reflection

Even the prophets stood in this queue

And I am surely the Ever-Forgiving. Allah speaks of Himself in the first person here. Two marks of emphasis are stacked together: inna, and the la- that strengthens it. A concise modern commentary renders ghaffār as abundant in forgiveness and pardon.

A theological commentary pauses on the name and draws up a list. Every prophet, it notes, asked for forgiveness. Adam said: if You do not forgive us and have mercy on us, we will be among the losers (7:23). Nuh asked it. Ibrahim hoped for it on the Day of Judgement (26:82). Musa, after the man he struck, said: my Lord, I have wronged myself, so forgive me (28:16). Dawud asked it, and Sulayman. And the Prophet ﷺ was told: ask forgiveness for your sin, and for the believing men and women (47:19).

That list does something to the ego. The proud self likes to think of forgiveness as a service for other people, the obvious sinners. The best people who ever lived did not think so. They stood in the queue for forgiveness all their lives, and never pretended they had earned a place outside it.

Picture a senior partner in a law firm, thirty years in. In all that time nobody has heard him say: I got that wrong. Juniors learn to route around his mistakes. Clients pay for them quietly. His reputation is spotless, and the firm is slowly bending around one man's inability to be forgiven.

The ayah offers a different shape of greatness. The One who forgives is the Great One. The one who asks is the honest one. A person who cannot ask has made himself too large for the only door that leads out.

The same commentary adds a fine contrast. A person may be ẓālim, a wrongdoer, or ẓalūm, much given to wrong, or worse still. Allah meets each level with a matching name: ghāfir, ghafūr, ghaffār. However far the wrong has gone, the forgiveness named here has gone further.

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.