Taha · Makki · ayah 105 of 135

Taha 20:105

وَيَسْـَٔلُونَكَ عَنِ ٱلْجِبَالِ فَقُلْ يَنسِفُهَا رَبِّى نَسْفًا

“And they ask you about the mountains, so say, "My Lord will blow them away with a blast.[855]”

Saheeh International

Essence

Asked about the mountains, the most fixed things anyone knows, the Prophet ﷺ is told to answer: my Lord will blow them away like dust.

A reflection

The most fixed thing you know

Say: my Lord will blow them away, a blowing. The verb nasafa has a picture the Word Dictionary records as established: mountains, the most fixed thing a person knows, blown away like dust in the wind.

The commentaries describe what that means. A concise commentary: He will crumble them like flowing sand, then send them flying on the winds. Another: He will uproot them from their foundations and scatter them, so that they become dust. A legal commentary records a classical description of stages. First uprooted from their bases, then turned into pouring sand, then into something like carded wool blown this way and that, then scattered dust.

The lexicons say jabal, mountain, names a thing gathered together in height, a great peg of the earth. A man who could not be moved was called a mountain. When diggers struck rock their tools could not bite, they said they had reached the mountain.

For the first hearers, nothing was more permanent. Tribes came and went; the mountains stayed. People navigated by them, named their lands after them, swore by their solidity.

Picture a hill farmer whose family has worked the same valley for six generations. Every morning he looks up at the ridge above the farmhouse. His grandfather used to say: that mountain will be here long after all of us are gone. It is the one thing in his life that has never changed.

The ayah says: even that. My Lord will blow it away.

The ego builds its own mountains: reputations, institutions, family names, achievements. We assume they will stand. This ayah is the gentlest possible correction. If the ridge above the farmhouse is dust in His hand, then so is everything we have built. Some hear arrogance in such a claim. But it is not a boast. It is a fact that frees us from worshipping what cannot last.

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.