Al-Isra · Makki · ayah 47 of 111

Al-Isra 17:47

نَّحْنُ أَعْلَمُ بِمَا يَسْتَمِعُونَ بِهِۦٓ إِذْ يَسْتَمِعُونَ إِلَيْكَ وَإِذْ هُمْ نَجْوَىٰٓ إِذْ يَقُولُ ٱلظَّـٰلِمُونَ إِن تَتَّبِعُونَ إِلَّا رَجُلًا مَّسْحُورًا

“We are most knowing of how they listen to it when they listen to you and [of] when they are in private conversation, when the wrongdoers say, "You follow not but a man affected by magic."”

Saheeh International

Essence

Allah knows what each listener is really listening for, and He heard the label the chiefs agreed in private: 'a man bewitched'.

A reflection

Above the highest ground of secrecy

The ayah opens with naḥnu aʿlamu: We know best. Not 'We found out' or 'We were told'. One classical reading notes the point of the timing words: His knowledge does not arrive from anyone. It is simply there, at the moment they listen and at the moment they whisper.

The word for their whispering is najwā. The lexicons find two pictures in its root. One is high ground, a najwa, so raised that a flood never reaches it. The other is private talk between two people. One lexicon joins them: a secret is speech lifted out of everyone else's reach.

That is exactly how the chiefs felt. They had found the high ground, the room where no follower of Muhammad ﷺ could hear. The ayah answers in one phrase. The highest ground you can find is still under His sight.

Picture two men in a café murmuring about a colleague, heads close, voices low. Across the room sits a woman who has been deaf since childhood. She reads lips fluently. She knows every word. They feel entirely private, and they are not.

She sees only lips. Allah knows the sentence before it is formed, and the motive beneath it.

Why announce this? Is it a boast, a God who wants us to feel watched? He gains nothing by being known to know. If you disbelieve, He says, Allah is free of need of you (39:7). The announcement does two jobs, and neither is for Him. To the plotters it is a warning: the private room is not private. To the Prophet ﷺ, sitting alone among enemies, it is comfort. You do not have to find out what they are saying. We already know.

This is where the ego shrinks. Our carefully managed self, the face we arrange for others, is a performance before an audience of one who sees backstage.

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.