Al-Anbya · Makki · ayah 48 of 112

Al-Anbya 21:48

وَلَقَدْ ءَاتَيْنَا مُوسَىٰ وَهَـٰرُونَ ٱلْفُرْقَانَ وَضِيَآءً وَذِكْرًا لِّلْمُتَّقِينَ

“And We had already given Moses and Aaron the criterion and a light and a reminder[888] for the righteous”

Saheeh International

Essence

Musa and Harun were given a book that parts truth from falsehood, shines with its own light, and reminds: but only the careful are reminded.

A reflection

The gift of telling things apart

Al-furqān: the first hearers knew this root as a clean parting between two things. The farq was the parting in a person's hair. A small flock that split from the main herd was a farīqa. Dawn itself was called furqān, because it separates night from day. One lexicon notes that farq is a close brother of falq, splitting, but looks less at the crack and more at the gap it leaves.

The commentaries read the word here in several ways. Most say it is the Torah, which separated truth from falsehood and the lawful from the forbidden. Others say it was the victory that separated Musa and Harun from Pharaoh. The Quran also calls the day of Badr a day of furqān (8:41). One early scholar said it was the parting of the sea. Another said it was a way out of confusion and doubt. One major commentator prefers the victory reading, because the next word is joined with "and", as if it were a separate gift.

All of these readings share one picture: a line drawn clearly where things had been mixed.

Picture a recycling plant at night. Broken glass of every colour pours along a conveyor belt. At the end, an optical sorter scans each fragment in a split second. Tiny jets of air flick the green pieces one way, the brown another, the clear a third. A heap that looked hopeless becomes three clean streams that can be made new.

Most of our confusion is like that heap. Ambition and greed, caution and cowardice, mercy and weakness look alike in the moment. The greatest gift is not more information. It is the ability to tell the pieces apart. That is what Musa and Harun were given, and what every reader of revelation is offered: a parting in the mixed heap of life.

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.