Al-Isra · Makki · ayah 103 of 111

Al-Isra 17:103

فَأَرَادَ أَن يَسْتَفِزَّهُم مِّنَ ٱلْأَرْضِ فَأَغْرَقْنَـٰهُ وَمَن مَّعَهُۥ جَمِيعًا

“So he intended to drive them from the land, but We drowned him and those with him all together.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Pharaoh set out to shake a people loose from the land; one letter later the sea had closed over him and all his riders.

A reflection

He wanted; We drowned

The ayah is nine words long in Arabic, and it is built like a hinge. On one side: fa-arāda, so he wanted. On the other: fa-aghraqnāhu, so We drowned him. Between them stands a single letter, fa, meaning 'and so'.

Look at the two subjects. 'He wanted' is one man's will, in the singular. 'We drowned him' is Allah's act, in the plural of majesty. One verb describes an intention. The other describes an outcome. The ayah lets us watch the most powerful man in his world reach for something, and then shows us whose verb actually happens.

What did he want? An yastafizzahum mina al-arḍ: to unsettle them out of the land. The verb comes from a root of lightness, of making someone light enough to be shaken off their place. The commentators read it as driving Musa and the Children of Israel out of Egypt. One adds that 'the land' may mean the whole earth, so that driving them from it would mean killing them all. Another reports both: by slaughter, or by banishment. The intention was total.

The answer was total too: wa-man maʿahu jamīʿā, and all who were with him. Not a defeat, not a retreat. An ending.

This is the place for the ego to grow quiet. Each of us lives by a string of 'I want'. I want this job, this house, this person to agree with me, this rival to leave. Most of those wishes are harmless. But every one of them is a singular verb waiting on a plural one. Whether it happens is not finally ours.

Is it boastful for Allah to say 'We drowned him'? A boast exaggerates. This sentence understates. It gives the end of a king and his army in four words, without a single adjective. It is the calm of One who did not strain to do it. And it was said to comfort a Prophet ﷺ whose own enemies wanted the same thing for him (17:76).

So when you next say 'I want', say it gently. Add in shāʾ Allāh, and mean it. The verb that settles the matter belongs to Him.

The full entry has 5 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.