Taha · Makki · ayah 87 of 135

Taha 20:87

قَالُوا۟ مَآ أَخْلَفْنَا مَوْعِدَكَ بِمَلْكِنَا وَلَـٰكِنَّا حُمِّلْنَآ أَوْزَارًا مِّن زِينَةِ ٱلْقَوْمِ فَقَذَفْنَـٰهَا فَكَذَٰلِكَ أَلْقَى ٱلسَّامِرِىُّ

“They said, "We did not break our promise to you by our will, but we were made to carry burdens from the ornaments of the people [of Pharaoh], so we threw them [into the fire], and thus did the Sāmirī throw."”

Saheeh International

Essence

The people's excuse is a lesson in the grammar of blame: not in our power, we were made to carry it, and he threw too.

A reflection

The grammar of 'it wasn't really us'

We did not break our promise to you by our own power. Listen to how the excuse is built. First, a denial of control: not bi-malkinā, not by our own power. Then a passive verb: ḥummilnā, we were made to carry. Then someone else: and likewise al-Sāmirī threw. Three moves, and in none of them does the speaker quite do anything.

The commentaries read the first phrase in several ways. Not by our own command, says one early report. Not by our own capacity, says another. A third: not by our own wish, we simply could not control ourselves. A narration-based commentator gathers all three and says they meet in one meaning. A person overpowered by desire, he says, may well say he did a thing without owning himself. In his reading, the people were confessing their error. Their desires had beaten them.

That is the honest core inside the excuse. And it is the most human sentence in the passage. Very few people set out to betray what they believe. They slide. Afterwards they find language that makes the slide sound like weather: something that happened to them.

Picture a young man explaining a crash to his father. The car slid. The phone fell off the seat. The light changed. Every sentence is true, and every subject is something other than him. Only at the end, very quietly, does he say he was looking at the phone.

The Quran records the people's words without comment here. But it has already given its verdict through Musa's question: did you want anger to fall on you? Being swept along does not cancel the choice to step into the current.

The practical lesson is simple, and hard. When you describe your own mistakes, check the grammar. If every verb is passive and every subject is someone else, you have not yet told the truth. Repentance begins with a sentence that starts with I.

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.