Al-Isra · Makki · ayah 41 of 111

Al-Isra 17:41

وَلَقَدْ صَرَّفْنَا فِى هَـٰذَا ٱلْقُرْءَانِ لِيَذَّكَّرُوا۟ وَمَا يَزِيدُهُمْ إِلَّا نُفُورًا

“And We have certainly diversified [the contents] in this Qur’ān that they [i.e., mankind] may be reminded, but it does not increase them [i.e., the disbelievers] except in aversion.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Allah turned His message every way so people would take it to heart, yet each fresh turn made some bolt further away.

A reflection

A ring of keys for every lock

A school caretaker starts in a new building. On his first morning he stands at a storeroom door with a ring of forty unlabelled keys. The first twenty-two do nothing. The twenty-third turns. He does not resent the others. Each opens some door in the building. They are simply not this door.

Wa-la-qad ṣarrafnā fī hādhā l-qurʾān: We have certainly turned things about in this Quran. The root's first picture is turning a thing back, or from one direction to another. The lexicons use it for turning a crowd back, and for the turns of time. The commentators reach for the winds. The Arabs knew each wind by name: the east wind, the west, the south and the north. One commentator says the Quran was made like that. It is not one kind of speech, but many.

He lists them. Promise and warning. Clear passages and allusive ones. Command and prohibition. Reports of the past, and parables. Another commentator explains why. Whoever wants to make a thing plain moves from one kind of speech to another. He moves from example to example until the clarity is complete. A second meaning is offered too. The Quran was not sent down all at once, but in portions, the angel sent again and again.

Hearts are not one lock. One person is opened by a story, and does not move for an argument. Another hears only a warning. A third is reached only by mercy, by a promise of forgiveness that seems too good to be true. The Quran carries every key on one ring.

This is also a lesson for anyone trying to reach another person. If a message did not land, saying it louder rarely helps. Turn it. A story instead of a rule, a question instead of a claim, a hope instead of a threat. The verb ṣarrafnā is intensive in form. The turning was not done once. It was done again and again.

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.