Wednesday 3 October 2012

King David

Translations of Qur'aanic Verses 38:21 to 39:24:

21. And has the information of the litigants come to your knowledge when they climbed over the walls of (King David’s) private chamber?
22. When they confronted David, he shrank back in fear of them. They said, “Fear not! We are two litigants. One of us has wronged the other. So judge between us with justice, and deviate not from what is right, and show both of us the right path.
23. “This man here is my brother. He has ninety-nine ewes, whereas I have one ewe. And he asks me to hand over to him even the one I have. And he prevailed over me in the discourse we had.”
24. David said (to the complainant), “He has certainly wronged you by demanding that your ewe be added to his ewes! And indeed do many associates – except those who believe in Allah and do righteous deeds – wrong one another; but how few are those exceptions!” And David at once realized that We had tested him (by presenting to him the case of the ewes)! And so he asked his Lord to forgive him, and bowed down, and turned to Him in repentance.5

Study Note:

5. In all probability the two litigants were angels sent by Allah Ta’ala to teach King David a lesson. Undoubtedly, the King had committed some unnamed impropriety, unbecoming of a Prophet King of his high stature. A safe bet is to assume that the King’s impropriety was of the nature of the impropriety involved in the litigants’ case. But since Allah almighty has thought it fit not to specifically name the King’s impropriety, we should better avoid echoing what Chritian scriptures (Old Testament) unabashedly accuse the King of committing an undoubtedly sinful act. The accusation has to be patently false since Allah Almighty could not have chosen a man committing such a heinous crime as His Prophet. The Christian scripture containing this accusation is not purely divine as the Qur’aan is. It is of the nature of the man-influenced and error-prone Ahaadeeth which too contain some unpalatable and unsavoury things about our own Prophet Muhammad (peace on him). What King David might have done could only be described as an impropriety not amounting to sin. And as the next Verse below informs us Allah forgave King David.



The above is an extract from yet-to-be-published Qur'aanic Studies Manzil VI.



















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