Al-Isra · Makki · ayah 69 of 111

Al-Isra 17:69

أَمْ أَمِنتُمْ أَن يُعِيدَكُمْ فِيهِ تَارَةً أُخْرَىٰ فَيُرْسِلَ عَلَيْكُمْ قَاصِفًا مِّنَ ٱلرِّيحِ فَيُغْرِقَكُم بِمَا كَفَرْتُمْ ۙ ثُمَّ لَا تَجِدُوا۟ لَكُمْ عَلَيْنَا بِهِۦ تَبِيعًا

“Or do you feel secure that He will not send you back into it [i.e., the sea] another time and send upon you a hurricane of wind and drown you for what you denied?[762] Then you would not find for yourselves against Us an avenger.[763]”

Saheeh International

Essence

Are you sure He will not send you back to sea, break your ship with a gale, and leave you none to take your side?

A reflection

No one to send the letter to

A retired man keeps a lever-arch file labelled 'Correspondence'. In it are thirty years of complaints: the council, the airline, the energy company, a hotel in Spain. He has won most of them. His proudest line appears in every letter: he shall be taking this further.

This ayah ends with a phrase that would empty his file. Thumma lā tajidū lakum ʿalaynā bihi tabīʿā: then you would find no one to pursue Us for it. A tabīʿ is a follower, and the sources record a sharp special sense. It is the creditor who dogs a debtor's steps until he is paid. An old poem pictures foxes fleeing an eagle, as a debtor runs from his pursuer. It is also the avenger who comes after a killer for redress.

Notice that the voice changes here. The verbs have been 'He'. Now it is 'Us', the plural of majesty. In two of the canonical readings, all five verbs of these two ayat are 'We'. One commentator says the meaning is the same either way. The effect is to end the passage in Allah's own voice.

This is a hard ayah for the ego, because so much of our sense of worth is tied to redress. Someone will answer to me. I will take it further. Here is the one court above which there is no appeal.

Does that make Him a tyrant, or arrogant? It would, if His power were the only fact. But He has told us a second. In a hadith qudsī in Sahih Muslim, Allah says: My servants, I have forbidden injustice to Myself, and made it forbidden among you. The Quran adds: 'Allah does not wrong anyone by the weight of an atom' (4:40). No one pursues Him, because He owes no one anything unpaid.

'He is not asked about what He does, but they will be asked' (21:23). The file can go back on the shelf.

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.