Al-Mu'minun · Makki · ayah 14 of 118

Al-Mu'minun 23:14

ثُمَّ خَلَقْنَا ٱلنُّطْفَةَ عَلَقَةً فَخَلَقْنَا ٱلْعَلَقَةَ مُضْغَةً فَخَلَقْنَا ٱلْمُضْغَةَ عِظَـٰمًا فَكَسَوْنَا ٱلْعِظَـٰمَ لَحْمًا ثُمَّ أَنشَأْنَـٰهُ خَلْقًا ءَاخَرَ ۚ فَتَبَارَكَ ٱللَّهُ أَحْسَنُ ٱلْخَـٰلِقِينَ

“Then We made the sperm-drop into a clinging clot, and We made the clot into a lump [of flesh], and We made [from] the lump, bones, and We covered the bones with flesh; then We developed him into another creation. So blessed is Allāh, the best of creators.[950]”

Saheeh International

Essence

A clinging thing, a chewed morsel, bones dressed in flesh, then a wholly new creation; the only fitting reply is the ayah's own: blessed is Allah.

A reflection

Praise the maker, not the watch

For most of this ayah, Allah speaks in the first person: We created, We made, We clothed, We brought forth. Then, at the end, the voice changes. It no longer says We. It says fa-tabāraka allāhu, blessed is Allah. One classical commentator explains the turn. Moving to the majestic name raises awe, and it signals that anyone who has heard these wonders described ought to hurry to say exactly these words.

The verb tabāraka comes from a root whose first image, in the lexicons, is a camel folding down at the water and staying there. Baraka is good that settles into a thing, holds fast and quietly grows. To say tabāraka allāh is to say that all such abiding good belongs to Him and flows from Him.

Picture a watchmaker's apprentice opening a two-hundred-year-old pocket watch under the loupe for the first time. Tiny wheels, a hairspring finer than a thread, every part turning in time. He does not congratulate the watch. He puts down his tweezers and says the name of the man who made it, quietly, almost to himself.

That is the posture this ayah teaches. A human being is the watch, not the watchmaker. Every stage just described happened to us, not by us. We did not knit our own bones or clothe them in flesh. Pride in what we are is a strange confusion, like the watch admiring its own wheels.

The ayah does not leave the reader in that humility without a voice. It gives them the right words. When you look at your own hands, your child's face or a scan on a screen, the fitting response is already written: blessed is Allah, the best of makers.

The full entry has 7 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.