Al-Baqarah · Madani · ayah 27 of 286

Al-Baqarah 2:27

ٱلَّذِينَ يَنقُضُونَ عَهْدَ ٱللَّهِ مِنۢ بَعْدِ مِيثَـٰقِهِۦ وَيَقْطَعُونَ مَآ أَمَرَ ٱللَّهُ بِهِۦٓ أَن يُوصَلَ وَيُفْسِدُونَ فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ ۚ أُو۟لَـٰٓئِكَ هُمُ ٱلْخَـٰسِرُونَ

“Who break the covenant of Allāh after contracting it and sever that which Allāh has ordered to be joined and cause corruption on earth. It is those who are the losers.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Those who step outside unravel pledges, cut what Allah ordered joined and spread ruin, and in the end lose their own capital.

A reflection

I never signed anything

A swimmer is dragged from a rip current by a lifeguard she has never met. Two years later she passes him in the high street and looks away, too busy to stop. She never signed anything. No contract bound her to him. Yet she knows, and so do we, that something has been broken.

The ayah says the fāsiqīn of the previous verse break 'the covenant of Allah after it was made firm'. A fair objection follows at once. What covenant? I do not remember agreeing to one.

The classical sources take the question seriously and list their answers. Some said it is the pledge taken from all the children of Adam: 'Am I not your Lord? They said: Yes' (7:172). Others said it is His instruction to His creation, the commands and warnings of His books and messengers. Others said it is the evidence He placed in creation and in the mind, pointing to Him. Others said it is the specific pledge taken from earlier scriptures' people to recognise the coming Prophet ﷺ. One commentator notes that the second view gathers all the others into itself.

A classical theologian records the sceptic's own objection. Some argued that Allah would not hold people to a pledge they cannot remember. So he preferred the covenant of evidence. It is written into reason and repeated by prophets and books. Nobody can say they never received that.

The root offers its own picture. ʿAhd is keeping hold of a thing and returning to it. The Arabs called a campsite ʿahd when a tribe kept coming back to it. The later rains that returned to land already watered were ʿihād. A covenant with Allah is less like a signature and more like a place you keep returning to.

And yanquḍūna, 'they break', is a craftsman's word. Naqḍ is unpicking what was firmly made: a rope unravelled, a wall taken down. The Arabs pictured a pledge as a rope, one commentator explains, because it holds two parties together. Mīthāq, the firm pledge, comes from binding tight.

So the swimmer did not tear up a contract. She let go of a rope she had always been holding. That is what the ayah describes. It usually happens not in one act of rebellion, but in slowly forgetting to return.

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.