Ṭāhā 20:40-41

Idh tamshī ukhtuka fa-taqūlu hal adullukum ʿalā man yakfuluh, fa-rajaʿnāka ilā ummika kay taqarra ʿaynuhā wa lā taḥzan, wa qatalta nafsan fa-najjaynāka mina'l-ghammi wa fatannāka futūnā, fa-labithta sinīna fī ahli Madyana thumma jiʾta ʿalā qadarin yā Mūsā · Wa'ṣṭanaʿtuka li-nafsī

"'When your sister was walking and saying, "Shall I show you someone who will take charge of him?" So We returned you to your mother, that her eye might be cooled and she might not grieve. And you killed a man; We delivered you from that distress and tried you with many a trial. You stayed years among the people of Midian; then you came at an appointed measure, O Moses. · And I made you for Myself.'"

The verse gives in a single verse what al-Qaṣaṣ tells in eighteen. The comparison can be verified from the text:

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the table above: al-Qaṣaṣ tells the story, Ṭāhā reminds of it. And a reminder is shorter than a telling — because the one addressed has already lived it. The difference in length between the two sūras arises from the difference in addressee.

The idiom qarra ʿaynan was treated at al-Furqān on 25/74 — the picture in the root: the eye's resting on a place and not straying, its settling where it is. I rely on that treatment.

And the pair is worth recording: taqarra ʿaynuhā and lā taḥzan. At al-Qaṣaṣ on 28/7 the two prohibitions given to the mother were wa lā takhāfī wa lā taḥzanī, and it was recorded there: khawf looks to the future, ḥuzn to the past. Here only ḥuzn is named — because what was to be feared is past, and what remains is only the pain of the past. This is a consistency between the two sūras that can be verified.

The sentence must be recorded: the event is recalled to the one addressed not in his own words but in the second person, and it is not covered over.

The same event was treated at al-Qaṣaṣ on 28/14-21, and it was recorded there: the text does not cover over a grave event in a prophet's life, and it has him make the assessment himself (hādhā min ʿamali'sh-shayṭān, innī ẓalamtu nafsī). I rely on that treatment.

What is peculiar to Ṭāhā is that the event is named in the middle of a list of favours. The sentence runs thus: we returned you to your mother — you killed a man — we delivered you from distress — we tried you — you stayed in Midian — you came.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the ordering of the sentence: the fault is not lifted out from among the favours. And the verb that follows is a verb of rescue: fa-najjaynāka mina'l-ghamm.

ٱلْغَمّ — root غ-م-م: to cover, to overspread. Ghamām — cloud (what covers the sky). Ghamm is the distress that covers a person over — that is, what narrows the breast. The picture in the word is the exact opposite of the request for sharḥ (opening) in the twenty-fifth verse. I record this as an observation.

The concrete sense of the root ف-ت-ن is to put metal into the fire and separate the pure from the dross. The root was treated in many places in the series (al-ʿAnkabūt on 29/2-3, al-Burūj, al-Ṣāffāt) and is not repeated here.

What belongs here is the pattern of the verbal noun: futūn. This is explained either as the plural of fitna or as an intensive verbal noun; on either explanation the sense comes out as "testing one by one, again and again". I render it as "We tried you with many a trial".

And the word fitna will occur four times in this sūra (40, 85, 90, 131) and each of the four names a distinct testing: the life of Moses, the trial brought by the Sāmirī, Aaron's diagnosis (innamā futintum bih), and the trial of worldly goods (li-naftinahum fīh). This distribution can be verified from the text and is another axis of the sūra.

"You came at an appointed measure." The root ق-د-ر: to measure, to set a measure to something. Qadar — a measure set, an amount apportioned.

Different explanations of the sense of the expression are transmitted:

Both explanations are transmitted; I do not impose a preference. And both agree with where the verse stands: the sentence comes after the parts of a life have been enumerated.

The root ص-ن-ع, Form VIII: iṣṭanaʿa — "to make with care for oneself, to pick out and prepare".

A point of word order must be recorded: li-nafsī — "for Myself". In the thirty-ninth verse the verb was passive (tuṣnaʿa); here the agent is explicitly the first person singular.

I record this as an observation about the structure: the agent kept unnamed at the beginning of the story is named openly at its end. And this agrees with the order of the verses: 39 tells of the childhood, 41 of the commissioning.