Taha · Makki · ayah 113 of 135

Taha 20:113

وَكَذَٰلِكَ أَنزَلْنَـٰهُ قُرْءَانًا عَرَبِيًّا وَصَرَّفْنَا فِيهِ مِنَ ٱلْوَعِيدِ لَعَلَّهُمْ يَتَّقُونَ أَوْ يُحْدِثُ لَهُمْ ذِكْرًا

“And thus We have sent it down as an Arabic Qur’ān[860] and have diversified therein the warnings that perhaps they will avoid [sin] or it would cause them remembrance.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The warnings were turned every which way, in a tongue made to be understood, so hearts might shield themselves or at least remember.

A reflection

The same truth, turned until it lands

Ṣarrafnā is a vivid verb. The lexicons gather its root under one idea: turning a thing back, turning it over. The money changer, the ṣarrāf, takes a dinar and slides back its worth in dirhams. Same value, different shape. The 'turns' of time are named from it too, the shifts that flip people over and bring them round.

So when Allah says We turned the warnings in it, the picture is of one truth handed over in many currencies. The concise commentaries say simply: We repeated it. Another says: We set it out in many kinds. In the Quran the same reality comes as a drowned army and as a flattened plain at the end of time. It comes as a question to the reader, and as faces lowered.

Picture a primary teacher trying to teach a class of nine-year-olds what a quarter is. She cuts a paper pizza into four. Half the class nods. She takes out coins: a pound is four twenty-fives. A few more faces change. She pours water into a measuring jug to the first line. One boy at the back, who has said nothing all morning, suddenly says, 'Oh'. The idea never changed. The currency did.

That is what the Quran does with every hard truth. It does not say it once, in one way, and blame you for missing it. It turns it. Again and again, each time in a shape that might suit a different heart, or the same heart on a different day.

Which means two things for the reader. First, if one passage leaves you cold, keep going; the same truth is coming round in another form. Second, this is how anyone who truly wants to be understood speaks. Not louder, not more often in the same words, but turned, until it reaches the one at the back.

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.