As-Saffat · Makki · ayah 118 of 182

As-Saffat 37:118

وَهَدَيْنَـٰهُمَا ٱلصِّرَٰطَ ٱلْمُسْتَقِيمَ

“And We guided them on the straight path.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The prayer every Muslim makes in Al-Fatiha is here answered for two brothers by name: Allah Himself guided them to the straight path.

A reflection

Even prophets are guided

And We guided them both. The subject of the verb is Allah. Not Musa's intelligence, not Harun's eloquence, not their years of experience. Two prophets who had faced Pharaoh, crossed the sea and received a Book are still described as people who were guided.

A theological commentary unpacks what that guidance involved. Allah showed them the road of truth, it says, through reason and through revelation. And He supplied them with tawfīq, the grace that makes a person succeed in walking it, and with protection from going astray. Every part of their uprightness traced back to Him.

That is a hard truth for the ego. We tend to treat our own good choices as achievements. I am the kind of person who prays. I would never do what he did. The ayah quietly removes that pride. If Musa and Harun were upright because Allah guided them, so is anyone else.

Picture a yachtsman who has crossed the Channel two hundred times. He could do it, people say, in his sleep. Yet before every crossing he opens the pilot book, checks the tide tables and listens to the shipping forecast. He has seen experienced sailors drown on a route they thought they owned. His humility is not weakness. It is why he is still alive.

The believer's version is the request for guidance repeated in every prayer, however long one has prayed. The moment we think we no longer need guiding, we have begun to drift.

Allah does not tell us this to collect our gratitude. He needs nothing from us (35:15). He tells us so that we stop leaning on ourselves, which is the one support guaranteed to give way. Vanity says I found the path. This ayah says: We guided them. The second sentence is safer, and truer.

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.