Al-Hashr · Madani · ayah 10 of 24

Al-Hashr 59:10

وَٱلَّذِينَ جَآءُو مِنۢ بَعْدِهِمْ يَقُولُونَ رَبَّنَا ٱغْفِرْ لَنَا وَلِإِخْوَٰنِنَا ٱلَّذِينَ سَبَقُونَا بِٱلْإِيمَـٰنِ وَلَا تَجْعَلْ فِى قُلُوبِنَا غِلًّا لِّلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ رَبَّنَآ إِنَّكَ رَءُوفٌ رَّحِيمٌ

“And [there is a share for] those who come after them, saying, "Our Lord, forgive us and our brothers who preceded us in faith and put not in our hearts [any] resentment toward those who have believed. Our Lord, indeed You are Kind and Merciful."”

Saheeh International

Essence

Every generation that comes after is taught to pray the resentment out before it has any chance to lodge itself in.

A reflection

A grudge is a splinter, not a natural growth

A splinter left under the skin for years does not heal on its own. The body simply grows a small hard lump around it. It learns to live with something that was never supposed to be there at all. The lexicons picture ghill, the word used here, the same way. Something pierced in and left there: a lash set into a brow, a collar locked around a neck. It is not a natural growth of the heart. It is a foreign object the heart has been forced to carry.

This is a different claim than it first sounds. The prayer is not simply asking God to make believers kind to one another in a general sense. It is asking that something specific never be allowed to pierce in and lodge itself where it does not belong. A grudge, on this picture, is not a stronger version of ordinary dislike. It is a wound with something still embedded in it, and wounds like that do not close by themselves.

This reframes what the prayer is actually requesting. It is not asking for warm feelings to be manufactured on command. It is asking that the heart be kept clear of something that, once it pierces in, tends to stay. Prevention, in this picture, is the only real cure. A splinter is far easier to keep out than to remove once the skin has grown around it.

There is a practical implication in reading grudges this way rather than as simple feelings to be managed. A feeling can be waited out. A splinter cannot; it has to be deliberately drawn, usually with more discomfort than letting it in ever caused. Whoever already carries an old grudge is not asked by this prayer merely to feel differently. They are asked to do the harder, more surgical work of actually removing what pierced in, rather than building a tolerable life around it.

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.