Maryam · Makki · ayah 62 of 98

Maryam 19:62

لَّا يَسْمَعُونَ فِيهَا لَغْوًا إِلَّا سَلَـٰمًا ۖ وَلَهُمْ رِزْقُهُمْ فِيهَا بُكْرَةً وَعَشِيًّا

“They will not hear therein any ill speech - only [greetings of] peace - and they will have their provision therein, morning and afternoon.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The Garden is first described by what you will not hear: no chatter that counts for nothing, only peace, and meals on time.

A reflection

Paradise begins with what you will not hear

Ask most people what Paradise is like and they will describe things to see and taste: rivers, fruit, gardens, palaces. Those are all in the Qur'an. But notice what this ayah chooses to say first, straight after naming the gardens. It does not describe a view. It describes a sound, or rather the absence of one. Lā yasmaʿūna fīhā laghwan: they will not hear in it any laghw.

The commentaries open the word in several directions. One calls it excess speech with nothing beneath it. One early authority took it as insults and abuse; another as false oaths. A Companion is reported to have defined it as any speech in which Allah is not remembered. And one commentator links the word to a sound the first hearers knew well: the chatter of sparrows and small birds, noise without meaning.

The root's oldest picture is even sharper. When blood money was paid in camels, the young calves were laghw: they were not counted towards the hundred. Laghw is what does not count. Speech that adds nothing, weighs nothing, is dropped from the reckoning.

Now consider how much of an ordinary day is exactly that. The notifications, the arguments in comment sections, the gossip, the background television, the half-heard podcasts. Not all of it is sinful. Most of it is simply uncounted: chatter before dawn.

The ayah's promise is not only that there will be no evil speech. It is that every word there will count. Nothing will be said that adds nothing.

If that sounds an odd thing to put first in a description of Paradise, try an experiment. Spend one day noticing how much of what you hear is laghw. Then the promise will sound less odd, and more like rest.

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.