Al-Kahf · Makki · ayah 54 of 110

Al-Kahf 18:54

وَلَقَدْ صَرَّفْنَا فِى هَـٰذَا ٱلْقُرْءَانِ لِلنَّاسِ مِن كُلِّ مَثَلٍ ۚ وَكَانَ ٱلْإِنسَـٰنُ أَكْثَرَ شَىْءٍ جَدَلًا

“And We have certainly diversified in this Qur’ān for the people from every [kind of] example; but man has ever been, most of anything, [prone to] dispute.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Both Sahihs record the Prophet applying this verse to somebody in his own household who had just said something theologically correct.

A reflection

One truth, turned into every currency

The verb is the one whose root the lexicons illustrate with a money changer. Turning a thing from the way it faces, or from one state into another, or exchanging it. A coin slid across the table as its exact equal in another currency.

And they note that the intensive form, which is the form used here, means doing that again and again. It is used of the winds, and of the Qur'an's warnings.

So the sentence is not that He gave many examples. It is that the same worth was turned, over and over, into whatever shape would be accepted.

The commentaries read it as making clear and diversifying, so that people might take heed.

At one railway crossing the warning was posted as words on a board, and as a bell, and as a lamp that swings. Three media, one message. The people who designed it knew that different people take in different things, and that the crossing does not care which.

The gate is still climbed every summer.

And that is where a confident self-assessment quietly fails. Almost nobody is proud about the big questions, which is why pride on them is so hard to see. It shows up instead as a settled sense that you were never properly told. That the case was never put to you in a way you could use. That if somebody had explained it better you would have acted.

The verse removes that defence before anybody raises it. The turning has been done, repeatedly, in every denomination.

What has not been done is the taking.

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.