Al-Kahf · Makki · ayah 47 of 110

Al-Kahf 18:47

وَيَوْمَ نُسَيِّرُ ٱلْجِبَالَ وَتَرَى ٱلْأَرْضَ بَارِزَةً وَحَشَرْنَـٰهُمْ فَلَمْ نُغَادِرْ مِنْهُمْ أَحَدًا

“And [warn of] the Day when We will remove the mountains and you will see the earth exposed,[793] and We will gather them and not leave behind from them anyone.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The word for the earth laid bare also names open ground with no hollow to hide in, and a champion stepping out of the line.

A reflection

The mountain, the crowd and your own nature

The lexicons on the word for mountain give it as a mass gathered up high, one of the great pegs of the earth. Then they list what else the same root carries. Firmness and bulk: a thing or a person that will not budge. A great multitude of people. And the make a person is formed upon, the nature you came with.

One root for the mountain, the crowd and your own disposition.

The other verb is the ordinary word for travelling. Going on, journeying, by day or by night. A caravan is named from it, and so is a way of life, and so is a saying that travels among people. And then this: making a thing go, which the lexicons illustrate with ships and with the mountains on the Last Day.

So the sentence is: the things that do not move are made to travel.

In one field there is a boundary stone that a century of ploughing has walked three feet west. Nobody moved it. Every year the share came a little closer and the soil went a little further, and the stone leaned, and settled, and leaned again. It is still called the boundary, and the deeds still refer to it, and two families have been polite about it for four generations.

Pride is nearly always an argument about something you are treating as a fixed point. Your judgement, your standing, the kind of person you are. The lexicons quietly put all three of those in the same family as a mountain.

And this verse is where the fixed points are set walking.

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.