لِّيَغْفِرَ لَكَ ٱللَّهُ مَا تَقَدَّمَ مِن ذَنۢبِكَ وَمَا تَأَخَّرَ وَيُتِمَّ نِعْمَتَهُۥ عَلَيْكَ وَيَهْدِيَكَ صِرَٰطًا مُّسْتَقِيمًا
Li-yaghfira laka'llāhu mā taqaddama min dhanbika wa mā taʾakhkhara wa yutimma niʿmatahū ʿalayka wa yahdiyaka ṣirāṭan mustaqīmā
"So that God may forgive you what has gone before of your sin and what has come after, and complete His favour upon you, and guide you on a straight path."
The verse is bound to the first by لِ (lām), and then four verbs follow in order. Three in this verse, the fourth in the next:
| # | Verb | What is done | Its direction |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | يَغْفِرَ | To forgive | Towards the past |
| 2 | يُتِمَّ | To complete | Towards what continues |
| 3 | يَهْدِيَ | To guide onto a path | Towards the future |
| 4 | يَنصُرَ (verse 3) | To help | Towards the future |
All four are imperfects in the subjunctive — that is, all of them hang on the same lām. The sentence must be read as a single structure: "…We opened so that these things might be."
And the order is meaningful: first the past is cleared, then the present is completed, then a direction is given, then support comes. An axis of time has been set up.
This lām has been much debated in the history of exegesis. The problem is this: how can a fatḥ be the "cause" of a forgiveness?
| Type | Name | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| لام التعليل | The lām of causation | so that… — a real relation of cause and effect |
| لام العاقبة | The lām of outcome (ṣayrūra) | …and in the end this came about — not the cause intended but the result that emerged |
There is a plain example of the second usage in the Qurʾān: "The family of Pharaoh picked him up, so that he might become an enemy and a sorrow to them" (al-Qaṣaṣ 28/8). This was not their aim in picking him up; it was what came of it. The lām states not the intention but the outcome.
| Explanation | How it is built |
|---|---|
| A causal link | The fatḥ, together with the thankfulness, patience and striving that come with it, becomes a means to forgiveness |
| A link of outcome | The lām states a result; what is being enumerated is the picture that emerged along with the fatḥ |
| A collective ground | The lām attaches not to the fatḥ alone but to the whole process preceding it — "all of this is for this" |
| The indication reversed | The fatḥ is not the cause of the forgiveness; both are two parts of one and the same divine decree, and they are merely set out in sequence |
I take no side in this debate. The one thing that needs recording is this: whichever explanation is taken, the verse presents the fatḥ not as a gain but as the beginning of a series of consequences. And the first item of that series is not an item of victory but an item of forgiveness.
This is the same pattern as the one seen in Sūrat al-Naṣr, and it is striking: there too the first thing to follow the victory was the seeking of forgiveness. In the Qurʾān fatḥ and forgiveness stand insistently side by side.
The concrete sense of the root is tail: ذَنَب (dhanab) — the tail of an animal, the part of a thing that trails behind.
- ذَنُوب (dhanūb) — a great bucket full of water; and "share, portion". It occurs in the Qurʾān: "Those who do wrong have a share too" (al-Dhāriyāt 51/59).
- أَذْنَاب (adhnāb) — tails; those who trail along behind.
ذَنْب (dhanb) — sin, offence. The connection the lexicographers record is this: dhanb is an act that drags something along behind it. Not a deed that ends the moment it is done, but a behaviour that pulls a consequence after it like a tail.
This shows how the word differs from the other words for sin. There are several distinct words in the Qurʾān, and each looks at the matter from a different place:
| Word | Root | What it looks at |
|---|---|---|
| ذَنْب | ذ-ن-ب | The consequence — what it drags behind it |
| إِثْم | أ-ث-م | The slowing down — the root carries "to weigh down, to hold back" |
| خَطِيئَة | خ-ط-أ | The failure to hit — missing the target |
| سَيِّئَة | س-و-أ | The evil / the ugliness — it occurs in verse 5 of this sūra |
| جُرْم | ج-ر-م | The cutting off — the severing of a bond |
One of the most debated expressions in the Qurʾān. Its lexical sense: "what has gone ahead of your sin and what has stayed behind."
- تَقَدَّمَ — root ق-د-م: to be in front, to go ahead. Qadam (foot), taqdīm (bringing forward), muqaddam (that which is in front).
- تَأَخَّرَ — root أ-خ-ر: to stay behind, to be left to the end. Ākhir (last), taʾkhīr (postponement), muʾakhkhar (that which is left to the end).
The two are an opposed pair. In Arabic, and in languages generally, naming the two opposite ends is a way of meaning everything that lies between them. English works the same way in great and small, far and wide, first and last. The Qurʾān uses this technique openly: "He knows what is before them and what is behind them" (al-Baqara 2/255; Ṭāhā 20/110) — what is meant is not two points but the whole.
So the plainest reading of the expression at the level of language is this: an extent is being stated. It is not saying "this much was forgiven, this much was left"; no limit is set.
The real issue here attaches to the subject known in theology as ʿiṣma: the preservation of the prophets from sin. Because the construction "your sin" occurs in the verse, it has been debated how the expression is to be reconciled with the doctrine of ʿiṣma.
The disagreement is not concealed. Below, in a table, are the principal explanations worked out in the classical exegetical and theological literature. I transmit them; I adopt no preference among them and present none of them as certainly correct.
| Explanation | How it is built | What is adduced as its ground |
|---|---|---|
| A pattern of extent | "Before and after" is not an enumeration but an expression of totality. The verse is not reporting a list of sins, it is making a declaration of forgiveness | The Arabic usage of stating a whole by an opposed pair (al-Baqara 2/255) |
| Before / after prophethood | Taqaddama: the period before the prophetic office; taʾakhkhara: what comes after it | A chronological reading; it is transmitted as one of the most widespread explanations |
| Zalla / leaving aside the better | What is meant is not "sin" but the leaving aside of what would have been more fitting; the higher the station, the finer the measure | The presence of similar expressions in the stories of the prophets |
| Ascription to the community | Dhanbika — "the sin of those who are on your account, on your path"; the construction states a relation | That at Muḥammad 47/19 forgiveness is asked for the believers as well |
| The things laid to his charge | What are meant are the acts the other side counted as "sin" and laid to his charge | That the context is a context of conflict |
| Tafwīḍ | The expression is a declaration of honour; its detail is committed to God and is not unfolded | Stopping at the boundary of the text |
One. Some of these explanations do not exclude one another. The "pattern of extent" reading and the stance of tafwīḍ, for instance, can be held at the same time.
Two. The Qurʾān itself commands the Prophet to seek forgiveness in more than one place: "Seek forgiveness for your sin, and for the believing men and the believing women" (Muḥammad 47/19); "Seek forgiveness for your sin" (Ghāfir 40/55); and al-Naṣr 110/3. These verses are plain, and they form the ground of this debate in exegesis. At al-Naṣr three views on the same question were set out in a table; no preference was adopted there either.
Three. This distinction must be kept: the question of ʿiṣma is a theological debate, and the schools differ over its extent — a broad agreement is transmitted regarding preservation from the major sins, and a divergence regarding minor error and forgetting. This commentary takes no theological side.
Whatever the views may be, what the verse does in its word order is plain, and it can be recorded without entering the debate.
Immediately after a proclamation of victory comes a list of four items, and the first item of the list is forgiveness. The text, that is, sets the first meaning of what has been won not as "what is obtained" but as "what is covered over".
I record this as my own reading: this ordering agrees with the later verses of the sūra. Nothing people do is made a subject of praise anywhere in the sūra — even the pledge is described as being "in reality made to God" (10), the withholding of hands is ascribed to God (24), the sakīna is sent down. If a text pulls the human share this far back, it is consistent that its first item should be a forgiveness.
تَمَّ — root ت-م-م: to be complete, to become without deficiency. Itmām — completing. Tatimma — a supplement that completes.
The choice of word is meaningful: itmām is not the giving of something that is absent but the closing of what is lacking in something already there. The verse, that is, presumes that the favour has begun; what it says is that it will be brought to its end.
- "…and so that I may complete My favour upon you" (al-Baqara 2/150) — in the context of the change of the prayer direction.
- "Your Lord will choose you… and will complete His favour upon you and upon the family of Jacob (Yaʿqūb)" (Yūsuf 12/6) — a sentence at the opening of the story that announces its end.
- "Today I have perfected your religion for you and completed My favour upon you" (al-Māʾida 5/3).
The link with al-Māʾida 5/3 is striking. There the same verb comes in the perfect: atmamtu — it has been completed. Here it comes in the imperfect: yutimma — it will be completed. It is transmitted that al-Māʾida 5/3 came down at the Farewell Pilgrimage; there is thus a distance of some years between the two verses, and the tense of the verb marks exactly that distance.
I record this as an observation; the order of revelation between the two verses rests on transmitted reports, and I do not present it as a proof.
هدى — root ه-د-ي: to show the way, to turn towards the right direction. The detailed analysis of the root was made at al-Ḍuḥā and al-Aʿlā; I do not repeat it here.
The analysis of the words صِرَاط and مُسْتَقِيم was made at al-Fātiḥa: that ṣirāṭ is the wide, open, well-travelled main road; that the lexicographers differ over its origin (some of them counting the word as having entered Arabic from outside); that it is always used in the singular in the Qurʾān and stands in contrast to the plural subul (al-Anʿām 6/153); that mustaqīm comes from the root ق-و-م and carries the sense "that does not bend and that holds upright" — all of that was treated there. I do not repeat it.
One: it comes indefinite. In al-Fātiḥa it is definite — ihdinā'ṣ-ṣirāṭa'l-mustaqīm. Here it is indefinite: ṣirāṭan mustaqīmā. In the classical explanations this difference is tied to a distinction between "the whole of a particular road" and "a stretch of that road, a stage of it". I do not present this as a settled ruling; but in the context of the sūra it looks meaningful: what is at issue here is a stage — and indeed the verb immediately before it is a verb that says "will be completed".
Two: the same expression occurs twice in the sūra. In verse 20 it will be turned this time towards the community — wa yahdiyakum ṣirāṭan mustaqīmā. What is given to the singular addressee in the second verse is given to the plural in the twentieth.