2/260 — "So that my heart may be at rest"
"Abraham said, 'My Lord, show me how You give life to the dead.' God said, 'Do you not believe?' He said, 'Yes, I believe; but so that my heart may be at rest.'"
This verse must be read together with the two before it: at 258 an unbeliever who argues, at 259 someone who doubts, at 260 a prophet who says he believes. All three on the same subject: the giving of life.
أَوَلَمْ تُؤْمِن — the question looks like a rebuke, but the acceptance of the answer does not show it to be one: the request is granted.
لِّيَطْمَئِنَّ قَلْبِى — root ط-م-ن: to grow calm, to settle, to come to rest in place. The lexicographers record the picture of "a thing settling into a hollow and becoming fixed".
The distinction is worth recording and follows from the verse itself: faith and iṭmiʾnān are not the same thing. One is acceptance, the other a settling within. What Abraham asks for is not the first but the second — and his request is not refused.
I record this as my own reading: the verse counts a request for reinforcement by seeing as legitimate. Asking a question is not set down as a lack of faith.