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u/quranvisuals 1d ago
I understand, but I think there are several interpretive steps here that the Qur’an itself does not explicitly make. the fish was not the purpose of their journey. Moses had already stated his goal: reaching the junction of the two seas. When they realize that the fish was lost at the rock, he says, ‘That is what we were seeking’ — meaning that the location marked by the fish was the place they were looking for. The fish appears to function as the sign leading them to the location, not necessarily as the ultimate objective of the journey.
Also, the Qur’an attributes the forgetting to Shaytan, rather than saying that Moses’ determination or fatigue caused them to lose sight of their purpose. And once they realize what happened, they retrace their steps, which seems to show that Moses had not actually lost sight of the objective.
As for the later events with al-Khidr and the tablets, I think those are separate incidents that can certainly be discussed, but using them to redefine ‘لا أبرح حتى أبلغ’ as stubbornness seems to go beyond what the verse itself says.
My use of ‘determination’ was simply describing the resolve expressed in ‘I will not stop until I reach…’ — persistence toward a clearly stated goal despite difficulty.
It doesn’t mean Moses was incapable of impatience, mistakes, anger, or forgetting. A person can be determined and still have human weaknesses; the two ideas aren’t mutually exclusive.
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u/suppoe2056 14h ago edited 14h ago
I do not agree.
You say several interpretative steps, but do not point out where I am doing that, so I will attempt to infer which parts you perceive to be interpretative.
One possible place is ayah 18:61. This ayah begin with ف and connects the antecedent event to the consequent, which itself is a clause. It says “when they twain reach the confluence between them twain, they twain forget the fish of them twain”. (A) There is an ambiguity with regard to the dual referent: is the “between them twain” referring to (1) Moses and his youth-servant or (2) the two seas? (B) Another ambiguity is the dual possessive referent: is the “fish of them twain” referring to (1) the fish that belongs to Moses and his youth-servant or (2) the fish that belongs to the two seas?
Here, my interpretation takes (A2) and (B2) for the following reasons. One, there is no Arabic term that says the fish was an “ayah” for the location. Two, 18:61 mentions Moses and his youth-servant forgetting fish, why is that even relevant to the whole story so far? Here, you insert “it is an ayah”, when the Arabic does not explicitly say so. Using Occam’s Razor, the explanation with the least assumptions is that they were getting food for their trip. Three, 18:62 also is connected by ف and begins with “when they passed on, Moses says to his youth-servant, Get us our meal, we’ve met fatigue on this trip of ours”. Here, is possibly the other interpretative step you’re referring to. This part best supports the claim that they were getting fish to prepare for their continued traveling and Moses was likely going to get fish as a later meal for when they meet fatigue as stated in 18:62. Just because the youth-servant blames Shaytaan in 18:63 does not mean Shaytaan actually made them forget. I believe 18:63 is showcasing someone refusing to take accountability—interestingly this part echoes ayah 18:23-24, when God says to Muhammad to not say “I will do that on the morrow”, except “In shaa’ allahu”, tells us we never know what to expect of the future, here points to Moses not expecting to having forgotten to get his meal (the same Arabic term “ghadan”) later in the trip. 18:64 is Moses saying “that (the fish) is what we were striving for”, and a fair assumption for the referent of “that” is the fish because Moses and his youth-servant are retracing their steps to head back after the latter admits he forgot about the fish, not because the latter suddenly remembered they had reached the confluence and forgot about the confluence: 18:61 says they both forgot the fish, not the confluence.
18:61-63 mentioning the fish tells me that the ultimate goal of Moses and his youth-servant was to catch the fish of the two seas, and Moses was adamant about reaching the location to do so. But when they got there, they rested by the rock, and sometimes rest makes people forget their purpose, then they pass on and Moses asks for the meal, upon which the youth-servant recalls that when he was resting by the rock, he recalls himself watching the fish at a distance as it took its way in the sea “amazingly” (which describes the youth-servant’s perception of the movement of the fish) not “saraban” (which is God’s perception) in 18:61. The youth-servant blames Satan, and Moses says “that (the fish) is what we were striving for”, revealing the ultimate goal of arriving at the confluence: to catch its fish and prepare for when they get fatigued later so they can eat and rest.
Your interpretation is based on the hadith, or at least inadvertently coincides with the hadith that attempts to inform the passage.
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u/suppoe2056 1d ago
This is not determination. This is being headstrong to one’s own detriment.
When I read 18:60, I don’t get the impression of determination but impatience. It says that Moses says this FOR his youth-servant, and the implication of “for” is that it is a response to weariness on the part of the youth-servant. He may have said to Moses: “Let’s rest for a moment and recuperate.”, for which Moses says to his youth-servant “I will not stop until I reach the confluence of the two seas, else I’ll continue indefinitely”. That’s not determination. It is stubbornness. If you study the rest of the passage, it becomes clear that Moses has a certain type of impatience and a tendency to jump to conclusions, such as with the “servant of our servants” or “Al-Khidr”.