38:21-Note
38:21 AND YET, has the story of the litigants come within thy ken - [the story of the two] who surmounted the walls of the sanctuary [in which David prayed]? . Note: [The story which, according to the oldest sources at our disposal, is alluded to in verses 21-26 affects the question as to whether God's elect, the prophets - all of whom were endowed, like David, with "wisdom and sagacity in judgment" - could or could not ever commit a sin: in other words, whether they, too, were originally subject to the weaknesses inherent in human nature as such or were a priori endowed with an essential purity of character which rendered each of them incapable of sinning" (masum). In the form in which it has been handed down from the earliest authorities , the story contradicts the doctrine - somewhat arbitrarily developed by Muslim theologians in the course of the centuries - that prophets cannot sin by virtue of their very nature, and tends to show that their purity and subsequen...