Al-Mu'minun · Makki · ayah 80 of 118

Al-Mu'minun 23:80

وَهُوَ ٱلَّذِى يُحْىِۦ وَيُمِيتُ وَلَهُ ٱخْتِلَـٰفُ ٱلَّيْلِ وَٱلنَّهَارِ ۚ أَفَلَا تَعْقِلُونَ

“And it is He who gives life and causes death, and His is the alternation of the night and the day. Then will you not reason?”

Saheeh International

Essence

Life, death, night and day turn in one hand; the ayah asks only that what you see should hold you back from ruin.

A reflection

The party she was not expected to attend

A family books a hall for a great-grandmother's ninety-seventh birthday. She has had three hip operations and a stroke. The grandson who organises it all runs marathons and is forty. The next year, the family gathers again. This time it is for his funeral, and she sits in the front row.

Everyone in that hall would have bet the other way. The ayah explains why the bet was never ours to make. Wa-huwa alladhī yuḥyī wa-yumīt: and He is the One who gives life and gives death. Two concise commentaries press the point with the word alone. He alone gives life, and there is no life-giver besides Him. He alone gives death, and there is no other who causes it.

The lexicons picture mawt as strength going out of a thing: a fire whose embers go cold, a wind that drops. Ḥayāt is the opposite: rain on dead ground, a plant that is moist and stirring.

Our pride assumes we hold at least some of those levers. Fitness, medicine, caution, money: all real, all worth using. But none of them is the switch. In 2:258 a king claimed, I give life and cause death. The Quran records the claim only to show how hollow it was.

Some feel this as a threat. Why should the timing of my death belong to someone else? Yet the alternative is not freedom. It is a death decided by chance, owned by no one, answerable to nothing. The ayah gives death an Owner, and an Owner has wisdom and mercy that chance does not.

So the ego is invited to bow, not to despair. Look after the body you were lent. Then let go of the arrogant fantasy that you are its final keeper. The One who gives life has never once asked us when.

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.