Al-Anbya · Makki · ayah 47 of 112

Al-Anbya 21:47

وَنَضَعُ ٱلْمَوَٰزِينَ ٱلْقِسْطَ لِيَوْمِ ٱلْقِيَـٰمَةِ فَلَا تُظْلَمُ نَفْسٌ شَيْـًٔا ۖ وَإِن كَانَ مِثْقَالَ حَبَّةٍ مِّنْ خَرْدَلٍ أَتَيْنَا بِهَا ۗ وَكَفَىٰ بِنَا حَـٰسِبِينَ

“And We place the scales of justice for the Day of Resurrection, so no soul will be treated unjustly at all. And if there is [even] the weight of a mustard seed,[887] We will bring it forth. And sufficient are We as accountant.”

Saheeh International

Essence

On that Day the scales are justice itself: no mustard seed of good is lost, no grain of wrong added, and He suffices as Reckoner.

A reflection

Enough as Reckoner: putting down our own scorecards

The ayah ends with a short sentence that carries enormous weight: wa kafā binā ḥāsibīn, and We are enough as reckoners. The plural is the plural of majesty. One commentator explains why the line is meant to make a person tremble. Nothing can be confused before this Reckoner's knowledge, and nothing escapes His power. Such a Reckoner, he says, is the One the sensible person fears most. Another early gloss: We are enough as counters, recording everything.

Now set that beside the way we behave. Picture a professional tennis match. A player is certain the ball was out. He shouts at the umpire, waves his racket, demands the replay. The electronic system shows the ball clipped the line by a millimetre. Even then he mutters that the machine is wrong. And that system, for all its cameras, still works within a small margin of error that the engineers openly publish.

We are that player, all day long. We keep our own scorecards on our siblings, our colleagues, our spouses. We are sure we know who owes whom. We rehearse our case in the shower. Our pride insists that unless we do the counting, it will not be done properly.

The ayah quietly takes the scorecard out of our hands. He is enough. His counting has no margin of error, no blind spot, no need of our lobbying. That is humbling, because it means our private tallies were never as accurate as we thought. It is also a relief. You can put the ledger down. The One who weighs mustard seeds does not need your help to notice what was done to you, or what you did.

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.