Taha · Makki · ayah 110 of 135

Taha 20:110

يَعْلَمُ مَا بَيْنَ أَيْدِيهِمْ وَمَا خَلْفَهُمْ وَلَا يُحِيطُونَ بِهِۦ عِلْمًا

“He [i.e., Allāh] knows what is [presently] before them and what will be after them,[857] but they do not encompass it [i.e., what He knows] in knowledge.”

Saheeh International

Essence

He holds what lies ahead of you and what you left behind; you cannot put a wall round even a corner of Him.

A reflection

The pundit’s predictions, replayed in December

Every January, a financial commentator goes on air and tells the country what the year will bring. Interest rates, house prices, which companies will rise. He speaks with complete assurance. Every December, a cheeky producer replays the clips. Some calls were right, most were wrong, and one or two were spectacularly wrong. He laughs it off and makes next year's predictions in the same voice.

Most of us are smaller versions of him. We plan the next five years in our heads. We decide what that person meant, what that silence means, how this will turn out. And we are just as confident about the past: why that happened, whose fault it was, what it did to us.

This ayah takes both confidences away at once. He knows what is before them and what is behind them. The concise commentaries give it plainly: what lies ahead of people from the Hour, and what lies behind them from this world. The future you are walking into and the past you have walked out of are both open before Him, entire. You see a slice of each, through a keyhole.

Then the second half lands. And they do not encompass Him in knowledge. It is not just that He knows more. It is that the relation runs only one way. He surrounds you; you cannot surround Him.

The ego hates this. It wants to be the one who knows, the one with the read on the situation, the one who saw it coming. Arrogance is often just certainty that has never been replayed in December.

But there is a gift in being shrunk like this. If He holds the whole of your yesterday and your tomorrow, you are allowed to stop pretending you do. Humility here is not humiliation. It is putting down a weight you were never built to carry.

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.