Al-Mu'minun · Makki · ayah 49 of 118

Al-Mu'minun 23:49

وَلَقَدْ ءَاتَيْنَا مُوسَى ٱلْكِتَـٰبَ لَعَلَّهُمْ يَهْتَدُونَ

“And We certainly gave Moses the Scripture that perhaps they[958] would be guided.”

Saheeh International

Essence

After the sea came a Book: the people just freed from Pharaoh were given written guidance, in the hope that they would follow it.

A reflection

First freedom, then a gift

A man walks out of prison after twelve years. At the gate he is handed a plastic bag with the clothes he came in wearing. Tucked inside, he finds a book that someone, he never learns who, has slipped in for him. It is the first thing anyone has given him as a free man.

The ayah follows straight on from Pharaoh's drowning. Wa-laqad ātaynā Mūsā al-kitāb: and We gave Musa the Book. Two commentators insist on the order. The "they" who would be guided cannot be Pharaoh's people, they say. The Torah was given to the Children of Israel after Pharaoh and his court had drowned. Another commentator adds that it was given all at once, after Pharaoh's destruction.

So the sequence is striking. The arrogant were destroyed. The people they had called servants were set free. And the first gift to the freed people was a Book.

The verb is ātaynā, We gave. The lexicons say the root is coming with ease, like a torrent running along its course, or a channel carrying water to the pool. Its causative form means making someone come to have a thing: to give. That image is established.

This is where pride loses its last foothold. Guidance is not something a people discovers by its own brilliance. It is given. The Children of Israel did not write the Torah; it came to them, like water down a channel.

Allah does not need our acknowledgement of that. He needs nothing. But we need to remember it, or we start treating guidance as our own achievement and lose it.

Think of the moment you first truly understood something of your faith. Thank Allah for it as a gift, not a discovery.

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.