يَٰبَنِىٓ إِسْرَٰٓءِيلَ قَدْ أَنجَيْنَٰكُم مِّنْ عَدُوِّكُمْ وَوَٰعَدْنَٰكُمْ جَانِبَ ٱلطُّورِ ٱلْأَيْمَنَ وَنَزَّلْنَا عَلَيْكُمُ ٱلْمَنَّ وَٱلسَّلْوَىٰ · كُلُوا۟ مِن طَيِّبَٰتِ مَا رَزَقْنَٰكُمْ وَلَا تَطْغَوْا۟ فِيهِ فَيَحِلَّ عَلَيْكُمْ غَضَبِى وَمَن يَحْلِلْ عَلَيْهِ غَضَبِى فَقَدْ هَوَىٰ · وَإِنِّى لَغَفَّارٌ لِّمَن تَابَ وَءَامَنَ وَعَمِلَ صَٰلِحًا ثُمَّ ٱهْتَدَىٰ
Yā banī isrāʾīla qad anjaynākum min ʿaduwwikum wa wāʿadnākum jāniba'ṭ-ṭūri'l-aymana wa nazzalnā ʿalaykumu'l-manna wa's-salwā · Kulū min ṭayyibāti mā razaqnākum wa lā taṭghaw fīhi fa-yaḥilla ʿalaykum ghaḍabī, wa man yaḥlil ʿalayhi ghaḍabī fa-qad hawā · Wa innī la-ghaffārun li-man tāba wa āmana wa ʿamila ṣāliḥan thumma'htadā
"O Children of Israel! We delivered you from your enemy, We made a promise to you on the right side of the Mount, and We sent down on you manna and quails. · Eat of the good things We have provided you, and do not transgress the measure in it, or My anger will settle upon you. And whoever My anger settles upon has fallen. · And I am indeed most forgiving to whoever repents, believes, does righteous work, and then keeps to the guidance."
The same expression occurred at Maryam on 19/52: wa nādaynāhu min jānibi'ṭ-Ṭūri'l-aymani wa qarrabnāhu najiyyā. I rely on that treatment.
And the difference is worth recording: in Maryam the expression appears as the place of the call, in Ṭāhā as the place of the promise given. The same place, two different events.
Al-aymana can mean both "the right side" and "the blessed"; the lexicographers record both possibilities. I transmit the disagreement and do not impose a preference.
Where the sentence stands must be recorded: the command and the prohibition come one after the other. Kulū (eat) — wa lā taṭghaw fīh (do not transgress the measure in it).
And the pronoun fīh is worth recording: "in it". That is, the prohibition of transgressing the measure is placed inside the provision itself. The prohibition is not of eating but of going beyond the bound in eating.
And the root ط-غ-ي must be recorded — it was tabulated in the treatment of the twenty-fourth verse: the same root characterised Pharaoh in the twenty-fourth and forty-third verses.
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the distribution of the root across these three verses: the delivered party is warned with the root that characterises the one they were delivered from — and the subject of the warning is now not oppression but favour. That is, the sūra gives ṭughyān not as a character but as a threshold: power and favour alike have a bound that can be crossed.
فَيَحِلَّ عَلَيْكُمْ غَضَبِى — the root ح-ل-ل: to alight, to come down and settle in a place (as a traveller stops for the night). That is, the anger does not "come" but "settles" — and what settles stays.
فَقَدْ هَوَىٰ — root ه-و-ي: to fall from above downward. From the same root comes hawā (the inclination of the self), and the relation between these two branches of the word is recorded by the lexicographers: the inclination of the self is also a fall. The root was treated at al-Najm on 53/1 (wa'n-najmi idhā hawā); I rely on that treatment.
And it lies in the same field of imagery as fa-tardā (you will perish — to fall) in the sixteenth verse. The sūra tells straying twice, as a fall, with two different roots.
| Order | Condition |
|---|---|
| 1 | Tāba — he repented |
| 2 | Wa āmana — he believed |
| 3 | Wa ʿamila ṣāliḥan — he did righteous work |
| 4 | Thumma'htadā — and then kept to the guidance |
The first three are joined with wāw, the fourth with thumma. In Arabic thumma conveys an interval and a sequence.
| Reading | What thumma'htadā is |
|---|---|
| 1 | Continuance — he persisted in that state |
| 2 | Not falling into doubt — he stood firm in his faith |
| 3 | Finding the right way — carrying on his work upon the right way |
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the difference in conjunction: the first three items are things that can happen in a moment; the fourth, separated off by thumma, is given as something spread over time. That is, the list distinguishes a decision from the keeping of that decision.
And the root ه-د-ي stands here as one of its eight occurrences in the sūra — in the tenth verse it was the thing Moses sought, in the fiftieth the core of the answer, in the seventy-ninth the thing negated, and here a condition.