Tafseer of The Heights · Al-A'raaf · 7:178
Whoever Allah guides - he is the [rightly] guided; and whoever He sends astray - it is those who are the losers.
Important: The Arabic source text is always authoritative. This translation is a study aid and has not been verified by scholars — do not use it as a basis for religious proof or for deriving rulings (ahkam). When in doubt, always consult the Arabic text and a qualified scholar.
The discourse on the explanation of His statement: مَنْ يَهْدِ اللَّهُ فَهُوَ الْمُهْتَدِي وَمَنْ يُضْلِلْ فَأُولَئِكَ هُمُ الْخَاسِرُونَ (178)
(Whomever Allah guides is the rightly guided one, and whomever He leads astray—those are the very losers. (178))
Abū Jaʿfar said: The Exalted, whose mention is exalted, says: Guidance and leading astray lie in the hand of Allah. And "the rightly guided one"—that is the one who treads the path of the truth, the one who rides the straight road of right direction—in his religion, the one whom Allah has guided to it, and whom He has thus granted success in attaining what is right. And the one who goes astray is he whom Allah has forsaken, so that He did not grant him success in obedience to Him. And whomever Allah does this to, he is "the loser": that is to say, the one who comes to ruin.
* * *
We have already expounded the meaning of "loss" (al-khasāra), "guidance" (al-hidāya), and "going astray" (al-ḍalāla) in more than one place in this book of ours, in a manner that makes it unnecessary to repeat it here. (153)
------------------------
The footnotes:
(153) See the explanation of these expressions in the lexical entries (hadā), (khasira), (ḍalla).
