Al-Anbya · Makki · ayah 104 of 112

Al-Anbya 21:104

يَوْمَ نَطْوِى ٱلسَّمَآءَ كَطَىِّ ٱلسِّجِلِّ لِلْكُتُبِ ۚ كَمَا بَدَأْنَآ أَوَّلَ خَلْقٍ نُّعِيدُهُۥ ۚ وَعْدًا عَلَيْنَآ ۚ إِنَّا كُنَّا فَـٰعِلِينَ

“The Day when We will fold the heaven like the folding of a [written] sheet for the records. As We began the first creation, We will repeat it. [That is] a promise binding upon Us. Indeed, We will do it.[908]”

Saheeh International

Essence

The sky we cannot measure will be rolled up like a written page; the One who began creation will bring it back, as He promised.

A reflection

The whole sky, rolled like a page

Lie on your back on a clear night and look up. The sky is the largest thing a human being ever sees. Every civilisation has measured its smallness against it.

Now read the ayah. 'The Day We fold the sky like the rolling of a scroll for writings.' The sky is not shattered or burnt. It is rolled up, the way a clerk rolls a finished document and ties it. The verb is spoken in what one commentator calls the plural of majesty: We fold.

Another surah completes the picture. 'The whole earth will be in His grip on the Day of Resurrection, and the heavens folded in His right hand' (39:67). Sahih al-Bukhari records the Prophet ﷺ saying that on that Day Allah will grasp the earths, and the heavens will be in His right hand. The commentaries also preserve an early report. The seven heavens and seven earths, with all in them, will be in His hand like a mustard seed. Believers affirm these words as they came, without likening Him to anything.

Picture an astronomer at the end of a long night at an observatory on a mountain. All night she has tracked galaxies so far away their light left before the earth had oceans. At dawn she rolls up the paper star chart on her desk and slides it into a tube. Then she laughs quietly at herself. She has just rolled the universe into a cardboard tube.

The ego feels large in a small room. Under the open sky it shrinks. This ayah shrinks it further. The sky that dwarfs us is a page in His hand. He needs nothing from us to do it. Our pride is smaller than the smallest letter on that page.

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.