Surah Al-Kahf 18:63
سُورَةُ الكَهۡفِ · Meccan · Verse 63 of 110
قَالَ أَرَءَيْتَ إِذْ أَوَيْنَآ إِلَى ٱلصَّخْرَةِ فَإِنِّى نَسِيتُ ٱلْحُوتَ وَمَآ أَنسَىٰنِيهُ إِلَّا ٱلشَّيْطَٰنُ أَنْ أَذْكُرَهُۥ ۚ وَٱتَّخَذَ سَبِيلَهُۥ فِى ٱلْبَحْرِ عَجَبًۭا
Translation
and [the servant] said, ‘Remember when we were resting by the rock? I forgot the fish- Satan made me forget to pay attention to it- and it [must have] made its way into the sea.’ ‘How strange!’
English translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem.
Meaning and reflection
'He said: Did you see? When we took refuge at the rock, I forgot the fish, none made me forget it but Satan, and it took its way into the sea, amazingly!' Ibn Ashur and al-Saadi note the servant's honest recognition that his forgetting of something important was Satan's doing, heedlessness of the crucial moment is exactly the enemy's specialty. Ask yourself: the verse quietly attributes the forgetting of what matters to Satan's influence, not the dramatic sins, but the simple lapse of attention that made him drop the very sign they sought. My own most damaging failures are often not grand rebellions but exactly this: forgetting, at the key moment, what I knew was important. The enemy rarely needs me to do evil; often it is enough to make me forget the good at the decisive point. What crucial things do I 'forget' at exactly the moments they matter most, and might that forgetting be more than accident?
Grounded in classical tafsir: Ibn Ashur, al-Saadi, al-Biqa'i.
Topics that discuss this verse
Surah Al-Kahf 18:63 is discussed in 8 study guides on Maani. Each guide gathers the key verses, Arabic words and lessons of one Quranic topic.
Reflect on this verse
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