Al-Baqarah · Madani · ayah 266 of 286

Al-Baqarah 2:266

أَيَوَدُّ أَحَدُكُمْ أَن تَكُونَ لَهُۥ جَنَّةٌ مِّن نَّخِيلٍ وَأَعْنَابٍ تَجْرِى مِن تَحْتِهَا ٱلْأَنْهَـٰرُ لَهُۥ فِيهَا مِن كُلِّ ٱلثَّمَرَٰتِ وَأَصَابَهُ ٱلْكِبَرُ وَلَهُۥ ذُرِّيَّةٌ ضُعَفَآءُ فَأَصَابَهَآ إِعْصَارٌ فِيهِ نَارٌ فَٱحْتَرَقَتْ ۗ كَذَٰلِكَ يُبَيِّنُ ٱللَّهُ لَكُمُ ٱلْـَٔايَـٰتِ لَعَلَّكُمْ تَتَفَكَّرُونَ

“Would one of you like to have a garden of palm trees and grapevines underneath which rivers flow in which he has from every fruit? But he is afflicted with old age and has weak [i.e., immature] offspring, and it is hit by a whirlwind containing fire and is burned. Thus does Allāh make clear to you [His] verses that you might give thought.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Picture a lifetime's garden burned in an instant, just as old age and helpless children make it everything; guard your deeds from that fate.

A reflection

Gone at the very moment it was needed

An old man kneels and lifts a floorboard. Under it, for thirty years, he hid savings for his grandchildren. The damp got there first. The notes come up in his hands as grey pulp.

The ayah builds its scene detail by detail, each one raising the stakes. A garden of palms and vines, the noblest trees. Rivers running beneath it. Fruit of every kind. Then the turn: 'old age has struck him, and he has weak children'. A concise commentary explains: he is too old to earn, and his children too young to help. The garden is no longer a luxury. It is the family's whole life.

Then comes the iʿṣār. A classical commentator describes it as a wind that whirls along the ground, then rises to the sky like a pillar. In it there is fire. The garden burns.

A concise commentary names the cruelty: he lost it when he needed it most. Then the meaning. This is the charity of the show-off and the reminder-giver. It vanishes when he most needs it, in the Hereafter.

An early scholar said of this parable, 'By Allah, few people understand it'. An old man, weak in body, with many small children, at his neediest for his garden. 'And one of you, by Allah, is at his neediest for his deeds when this world is cut off from him'.

That is the heart of it. We imagine our good deeds are a garden we can admire now. But their real season is later. The day we arrive with nothing else, unable to plant again, is the day we will need every tree.

The old man cannot replant at eighty. We can still plant today, and guard what we have planted.

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.