As-Saffat · Makki · ayah 117 of 182

As-Saffat 37:117

وَءَاتَيْنَـٰهُمَا ٱلْكِتَـٰبَ ٱلْمُسْتَبِينَ

“And We gave them the explicit Scripture [i.e., the Torah],”

Saheeh International

Essence

After the rescue came a Book, given to both brothers: clear in itself, and able to make everything else clear to whoever reads it.

A reflection

Extra letters, extra clarity

The Book given to Musa and Harun is called al-mustabīn. The root, b-y-n, has an established picture: distance that uncovers. Bayn is parting, a gap opening between two things. Once something stands apart, it can be seen. A proverb said the dawn had made itself plain to anyone with two eyes.

The Quran often calls a book mubīn, clear. Here it uses a longer form, mustabīn, and a linguistic commentary explains why that matters. It means a book that reaches the utmost in clarity and detail, as the extra letters in the word suggest. More letters, more meaning. The form itself stretches, the way dawn stretches across a sky until nothing is left in shadow.

A commentary on language adds that istabāna has two uses. A thing istabāna when it became clear in itself. And a person istabāna a thing when it became clear to him. So al-mustabīn can face two ways. The Book is plain in itself, and it is also a Book through which a reader comes to see.

Picture a lorry driver on a night run across high moorland. For hours there is only the strip of road in the headlights. Then, somewhere past four, the sky begins to separate from the hills. He sees, for the first time, the valleys he has been driving beside all night. They were there all along. The light did not create them. It parted them from the dark.

That is what a mustabīn Book does. It does not invent the realities of life, death, right and wrong. It separates them from the darkness until a person can see where they have been driving. A narration-based commentary describes this Book, the Torah, as great, clear and manifest. The word chosen for it is a sunrise in slow motion.

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.