Ash-Shu'ara · Makki · ayah 13 of 227

Ash-Shu'ara 26:13

وَيَضِيقُ صَدْرِى وَلَا يَنطَلِقُ لِسَانِى فَأَرْسِلْ إِلَىٰ هَـٰرُونَ

“And that my breast will tighten and my tongue will not be fluent, so send for Aaron.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Musa tells his Lord plainly that his chest tightens and his tongue halts, then asks for his brother: a weakness named becomes a request.

A reflection

How hostility reaches the tongue

Musa describes something many people have felt without naming it. One classical commentator traces it as a chain. Being denied tightens the chest. A tight chest makes the tongue catch, especially in someone whose speech already halts. So Musa begins with the fear of denial, then the tight chest, then the tongue that will not run.

Another commentator adds an observation from ordinary life. Many eloquent people, he notes, falter when grief presses hard and their chests tighten. Their tongues stumble until they can barely say what they mean. The words are there. They will not come out.

Picture a newly elected parish councillor. At her kitchen table she argues for a crossing outside the school, fluently, with figures and examples. At the meeting, someone at the back laughs as she stands up. Her chest closes. The sentence she rehearsed twenty times will not leave her mouth.

She has not lost her knowledge. She has met what Musa described. Hostility goes in through the chest and comes out at the tongue.

There is a gift in knowing this about yourself. Musa does not pretend he will be fine. Nor does he treat his halting tongue as a moral failure. He reads his own body as plainly as he reads the danger outside, and he plans for both.

That is a kind of self-knowledge many of us avoid. We would rather believe we will rise to the occasion, and then feel ashamed when we do not.

So when your words desert you in a hostile room, don't conclude that you are a fraud. Conclude that you are human. Then do what Musa did. Name it to your Lord, and ask for the help that fits.

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.