Hidden Word, Arabic 12: With My Hands I Made Thee
Bahá'u'lláh, The Hidden Words, (1858), Bahá'í Publishing Trust · Read original
Studio narration for this story is coming — it’ll be generated by the cloud-TTS pipeline (voice: auto-selected from the source author).
When in Bahá'í history
The twelfth Hidden Word in Arabic gives one of the most tender images in the entire collection. The making of the human soul is described in the language of close, deliberate craft.
O SON OF BEING! With the hands of power I made thee and with the fingers of strength I created thee; and within thee have I placed the essence of My light. Be thou content with it and seek naught else, for My work is perfect and My command is binding. Question it not, nor have a doubt thereof.
The verbs name a different kind of creation than the casual calling-into-being of cosmologies. The soul was made with the hands of power. It was created with the fingers of strength. There is intentionality in the image — the patient, attentive work of a Maker who is laying out a creation by hand.
What the Maker placed within the soul is the essence of My light. Bahá'u'lláh does not say a small portion or a partial share. He says the essence. The light by which the soul sees its Maker is the very same light by which the Maker can be seen. The seer and the seen meet through the same window.
The closing imperatives — Be thou content with it and seek naught else; for My work is perfect and My command is binding — are pastoral. The soul is being instructed to trust its own making. Many of the soul's wanderings come from a refusal to be satisfied with the gift one has been given. Bahá'u'lláh names this refusal directly and meets it with reassurance.
The Hidden Word is read often at occasions of recommitment — at the entry of a new believer into the Faith, at the re-dedication of one's life after a season of difficulty. It gives the soul a foundation to stand on that no external trial can shake: the soul was made by hand.
Source: Bahá'u'lláh, The Hidden Words (Bahá'í Publishing Trust). Public domain text from the Bahá'í Reference Library.
Discuss this story
Reflection
- The image is intimate. *With the hands of power I made thee and with the fingers of strength I created thee.* What does it mean to receive the dignity of having been *made by hand?*
- The Hidden Word refuses dust. *Within thee have I placed the essence of My light.* What in your daily speaking and acting contradicts that placement?
Cite this story
Bahá'u'lláh. (1858). *The Hidden Words*. Bahá'í Publishing Trust. https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/bahaullah/hidden-words/
Record yourself reading this story
Recording stays on this device only. Nothing is uploaded.
Related stories
Hidden Word, Arabic 13: Noble Have I Created Thee
The thirteenth Hidden Word in Arabic — Bahá'u'lláh's confronting question to the soul that has forgotten its own original nobility and has set itself in the rank of the abased.
Hidden Word, Arabic 32: Wert Thou to Speed Through the Immensity of Space
The thirty-second Hidden Word in Arabic — Bahá'u'lláh's image of the soul's freedom: that no journey through space and no traversal of the heavens can substitute for inner detachment from all save God.
Hidden Word, Arabic 1: A Pure, Kindly and Radiant Heart
The opening Hidden Word in Arabic — Bahá'u'lláh's first counsel in the mystical aphorisms revealed in Baghdád — names what He most desires of the human heart: that it be pure, kindly, and radiant, so that an everlasting sovereignty may be conferred upon it.
Hidden Word, Arabic 2: The Best Beloved of All Things
The second Hidden Word in Arabic names justice — *the best beloved of all things in My sight* — and explains it not as rule of law but as the soul's capacity to see with its own eyes and know with its own knowledge.