Al-Furqan · Makki · ayah 42 of 77

Al-Furqan 25:42

إِن كَادَ لَيُضِلُّنَا عَنْ ءَالِهَتِنَا لَوْلَآ أَن صَبَرْنَا عَلَيْهَا ۚ وَسَوْفَ يَعْلَمُونَ حِينَ يَرَوْنَ ٱلْعَذَابَ مَنْ أَضَلُّ سَبِيلًا

“He almost would have misled us from our gods had we not been steadfast in [worship of] them." But they are going to know, when they see the punishment, who is farthest astray in [his] way.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The mockers boast that only their stubbornness kept him from winning them over: steadfastness spent on the wrong thing, until seeing brings knowing.

A reflection

Patience holding on to the wrong rope

Ṣabr is one of the most praised words in the Quran. We hear it at funerals and in hospital corridors, and we assume it is always a virtue. Then this ayah puts it in the mouths of idolaters. 'He almost led us away from our gods,' they say, 'had we not been ṣabarnā upon them.' Steadfast. Patient. Holding firm.

The commentaries gloss it plainly. We stayed firm in their worship, says one. We persisted and toughened ourselves, says another. A third: we confined our souls to worshipping them.

That last phrase opens the root. Its first picture is ḥabs, holding something in place. An animal kept tied without fodder was said to be held this way. An old battle poem boasts of a soul held anchored while the coward's soul strains to run. So ṣabr is not a mood. It is an act: taking hold of your own soul and keeping it where you have decided it should stay.

Which means everything depends on where that is.

Picture a tenor in a community choir who has sung one bar of the same carol a semitone flat for three years. A new conductor stops the rehearsal and plays him the note. He nods, sings it flat again, and says afterwards: 'I've always sung it that way.' He is not lazy. He is loyal, and proud of it. The loyalty is the problem.

The Makkan elders were not weak men. They held on, under real pressure, to what they had inherited. The ayah does not mock their endurance. It asks what they were enduring for. Patience is a grip, and a grip is only as good as the rope it holds.

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.