Surah Al-Baqarah 2:55
سُورَةُ البَقَرَةِ · Medinan · Verse 55 of 286
وَإِذْ قُلْتُمْ يَٰمُوسَىٰ لَن نُّؤْمِنَ لَكَ حَتَّىٰ نَرَى ٱللَّهَ جَهْرَةًۭ فَأَخَذَتْكُمُ ٱلصَّٰعِقَةُ وَأَنتُمْ تَنظُرُونَ
Translation
Remember when you said, ‘Moses, we will not believe you until we see God face to face.’ At that, thunderbolts struck you as you looked on.
English translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem.
Meaning and reflection
'And when you said: O Moses, we will never believe you until we see God plainly, so the thunderbolt seized you while you were looking on.' al-Saadi and Ibn Kathir note the arrogance of the demand, a people who had already witnessed sign after sign still insisting they would not believe until they saw God directly, an impossible and insolent condition. Ask yourself: their problem was never a shortage of evidence, they had seen the sea split. The problem was the heart: no number of signs satisfies a soul determined to keep demanding one more before it will submit. It exposes my own version, 'if God would just show me this, then I'd believe/change/commit', a moving goalpost that reveals the resistance is not intellectual but a refusal to yield. Am I withholding faith or obedience behind a demand for proof I've already been given many times over, using 'I need to see more' as a cover for a heart that simply doesn't want to bow?
Grounded in classical tafsir: al-Saadi, Ibn Kathir, Ibn Ashur.
Topics that discuss this verse
Surah Al-Baqarah 2:55 is discussed in 9 study guides on Maani. Each guide gathers the key verses, Arabic words and lessons of one Quranic topic.
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