2 Samuel 12:5 Meaning David’s Anger Burned Hot Against the Man

Ghaḍab: Anger Al-Ghazali treats anger as a fire in the chest, and from the inside that fire feels like fairness. A person in that heat hands down his sentence fast, and the speed of it feels like proof he is right. The louder the verdict, the less room he leaves to wonder whether the same charge fits him.

Nafs al-ammāra: The self that pushes a person toward wrong The Quran names a self that urges a person toward wrong, and one of its favorite moves is loud accusation. Condemning someone else for a fault puts distance between a man and that same fault in himself, and the distance feels like innocence. So the harshest verdicts often come from someone who has done the same thing and cannot stand to know it.

Rayn: Rust on the heart The Quran describes wrongdoing leaving a film over the heart, like rust on metal. The film sits directly over the thing a person has done, which is why he can spot that exact fault in anyone else with perfect clarity. He sees it sharply in other people and stays completely blank about it in himself.

The believer is a mirror for the believer: another person shows you your own face A saying of the Prophet sets one person in front of another as a mirror. Someone who has stopped seeing himself can still see a stranger clearly, so a case laid out about somebody else reaches him when a direct charge would bounce off. He passes judgment freely, and then the judgment turns around and lands on him.

Muḥāsaba: Calling yourself to account Al-Ghazali gives this name to the review a person makes of his own conduct, the way a shopkeeper goes over his books at the end of the day. Someone who does it regularly meets his own faults before anyone else has to name them, so he is much harder to catch off guard. The habit also cools his judgment of other people, because he already knows what he himself is capable of.