Al-Baqarah · Madani · ayah 117 of 286

Al-Baqarah 2:117

بَدِيعُ ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٰتِ وَٱلْأَرْضِ ۖ وَإِذَا قَضَىٰٓ أَمْرًا فَإِنَّمَا يَقُولُ لَهُۥ كُن فَيَكُونُ

“Originator of the heavens and the earth. When He decrees a matter, He only says to it, "Be," and it is.”

Saheeh International

Essence

He originated the heavens and the earth with no model before them, and whatever He decrees He simply tells to be, and it is.

A reflection

The design that copied nothing

A design student spends a whole term on a chair she believes is entirely new. At her final review, the tutor slides a furniture catalogue from 1962 across the table. The chair inside is almost the same. She is crushed for a day, and then oddly relieved. Everyone, it turns out, is copying someone.

The ayah names Allah Badīʿ of the heavens and the earth. The lexicons picture the root as a well dug where no one had ever dug. Or a rope spun from fresh fibre, not an old one twisted again. A major early commentator defines the Badīʿ as the One who brings into being what no one had made before. There was no model to follow. Another lexicon adds that when the word is used of Allah, it means making without tool, material, time or place.

That is a level of making no human being has ever reached. Every human invention borrows. We copy nature, earlier work, each other. Even our most original ideas are made from materials we did not make, in minds we did not design.

This is humbling for the ego, especially the clever ego. Pride in our own creativity forgets that the spark itself was given. The One who made the first sky had nothing to copy and no one to ask.

He does not need us to admire His work. He is the Rich, the Praiseworthy (35:15). But looking up and recognising what we see is a mercy to us. It puts our own achievements in their true size: small, borrowed, and still a gift.

The student kept the catalogue. On its first page she wrote one word: Badīʿ.

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.