Ash-Shu'ara الشعراء

Makki · 227 ayat · 227 with pondering

• Ayah 1Three letter-names, Ṭā Sīn Mīm, stand at the door of a surah that consoles a grieving Prophet, and their meaning Allah keeps.
• Ayah 2What follows are signs of a Book that is clear in itself and makes things clear, drawing the line between truth and falsehood.
• Ayah 3With concern, not reproach, Allah tells His Prophet he is close to destroying himself with grief because his people will not believe.
• Ayah 4Allah could send a sign from the sky that would bow every neck for good, yet He withholds it, wanting faith that is chosen.
• Ayah 5Every fresh reminder the Most Merciful sends them finds them already turned away, so mercy itself is met with a closed face.
• Ayah 6They turned away, then called it a lie, then laughed; but what they laughed at is real, and its news is already on the road.
• Ayah 7Look down at the ground under your feet: every kind of noble, generous growth, beyond counting, and every one of them caused by Him.
• Ayah 8The sign stands complete; that most refuse it has been the shape of every prophet's story, and is no fault in the sign.
• Ayah 9After every story of ruin and rescue one sentence returns: the Lord nothing can overpower is the Lord whose mercy still holds the door open.
• Ayah 10One man, alone on a mountain at night, is called by his Lord and sent back to the people he fled, named by their wrongdoing.
• Ayah 11Even to Pharaoh's people the first word is a question, not a sentence: will they not put a shield between themselves and what is coming?
• Ayah 12Sent to the most dangerous court on earth, Musa's first words are an honest fear, told to his Lord: they will call me a liar.
• Ayah 13Musa tells his Lord plainly that his chest tightens and his tongue halts, then asks for his brother: a weakness named becomes a request.
• Ayah 14Before Pharaoh can raise it, Musa raises it himself with his Lord: the old killing, the claim they hold, and the fear it brings.
• Ayah 15One word, kallā, stops a frightened man's fear; then both brothers are sent with His signs and a promise: We are with you, listening.
• Ayah 16Two brothers walk into a god-king's court and, with one voice, name Another as Lord of every world, the king's own included.
• Ayah 17Spelled out in a palace, the message of the Lord of the worlds begins with five words: let them go with us.
• Ayah 18Told of the Lord of the worlds, Pharaoh answers with the cradle: I reared you, you were ours, so who are you to speak?
• Ayah 19Pharaoh names no deed, only 'the deed you did', and seals it with a label: old weapons against a messenger he cannot answer.
• Ayah 20Accused of an old killing, Musa neither denies nor drowns: he owns the act, dates it to his unguided self, and refuses Pharaoh's label.
• Ayah 21Musa admits he ran in fear, then names what came after: his Lord gave the fugitive judgement and sent him back as a messenger.
• Ayah 22Pharaoh counts raising one boy as a favour; Musa points out that the favour grew from enslaving his whole people.
• Ayah 23Losing the personal argument, Pharaoh shifts ground and asks with contempt what this 'Lord of the worlds' is, as if inspecting an item.
• Ayah 24Asked what the Lord of the worlds is, Musa names all above, below and between, and asks if his hearers are certain of anything.
• Ayah 25Unable to answer Musa, Pharaoh turns to the courtiers around him and asks, with a sneer, whether they are hearing this.
• Ayah 26When Pharaoh mocks, Musa brings the answer close: Allah is your Lord, and the Lord of every forefather you descend from.
• Ayah 27Unable to answer, Pharaoh tells his court that this 'messenger of yours' is mad, and in mocking him still names him as sent.
• Ayah 28Called mad, Musa gives his plainest proof yet: the Lord of every sunrise and sunset, and of every hour between, if only you would reason.
• Ayah 29Out of answers, Pharaoh reaches for the one argument left: take any god but me, and you join my prisoners.
• Ayah 30Threatened with the pit, Musa does not flinch or plead; he asks one calm question: even if I bring you something that makes it plain?
• Ayah 31Pharaoh accepts the challenge, hoping to catch a fraud, and in doing so concedes the rule he cannot escape: only the truthful can bring it.
• Ayah 32Musa throws down his staff and it is, beyond doubt, a great serpent; the same words stand at 7:107, where the fuller entry lives.
• Ayah 33Musa draws out his hand and it shines white for all who look; the same words stand at 7:108, where the fuller entry lives.
• Ayah 34Faced with a living serpent and a shining hand, the self-made god turned to the nobles around him and reached for a label.
• Ayah 35The self-proclaimed god paints Musa as an invader and then, of all things, asks his own servants what he should do.
• Ayah 36The court does not advise killing Musa: delay him and his brother, they say, and scour the cities for magicians to beat him.
• Ayah 37Pharaoh's fear is answered with a superlative: every master magician in the land will be brought, as if the truth could be outnumbered.
• Ayah 38The magicians were gathered for a fixed hour on a known day, in words the Quran uses again for the appointment no one will miss.
• Ayah 39Criers hurried a whole people out with a question that was really a push, to watch a day that would quietly judge them.
• Ayah 40The crowd came to watch a contest about truth, but had already chosen their side: we will follow the magicians, if only they win.
• Ayah 41The magicians' first words at court were about their fee; the rest of the surah answers them through prophets who ask no wage of anyone.
• Ayah 42Pharaoh says yes and adds nearness to the wage, but one small word, 'then', makes the whole promise hang on winning.
• Ayah 43Facing Egypt's finest magicians before a vast crowd, Musa says four calm words: throw whatever you are going to throw.
• Ayah 44The magicians threw their ropes and staffs and swore by Pharaoh's might that they had won, before the answer had even been thrown.
• Ayah 45They swore by Pharaoh's might and made ropes look alive; Musa swore by nothing, threw his staff, and the whole overturned show was swallowed.
• Ayah 46Men hired to win for Pharaoh were flung down by what they saw; their first act of faith was a prostration nobody had taught them.
• Ayah 47Minutes after asking Pharaoh for a wage, his magicians answer his own sneering question aloud: we believe in the Lord of the worlds.
• Ayah 48Three words unseat a king who called himself lord: the Lord we mean is the One Musa and Harun serve.
• Ayah 49Losing his own experts in public, Pharaoh reaches for insinuation, accusation, menace and torture: the kit of power that has lost its argument.
• Ayah 50Threatened with the stake, the new believers answer in five words: no harm; we are only going home to our Lord.
• Ayah 51Threatened with the cross, the magicians spoke only of their Lord and their sins, and leaned towards forgiveness as near, because they had believed first.
• Ayah 52While Pharaoh watched every city, Allah's decisive word reached Musa unheard: lead My servants out by night, and know the old master will follow.
• Ayah 53His slaves gone, the self-declared lord sent heralds through every city to drive men into his army, repeating a move that had already failed.
• Ayah 54Pharaoh shrank a whole people into rags with four layers of contempt; the words exposed his fear and blinded him to where he was heading.
• Ayah 55Pharaoh calls the fleeing believers a mere scrap, then admits they enrage him: contempt that cannot stop talking is fear in disguise.
• Ayah 56Pharaoh boasts that his host is gathered and watchful, yet he never guarded against the One who had already decided the morning.
• Ayah 57After three lines of Pharaoh's 'we', Allah speaks once, and the lords of the Nile gardens are moved out like guests whose stay has ended.
• Ayah 58Sealed treasures and a seat of honour, the things people trust most to last, were left behind in a single morning.
• Ayah 59Before the chase is even told, four words hand Pharaoh's gardens to the very people he is chasing.
• Ayah 60At sunrise Pharaoh's whole state set out behind a band of runaways: the mighty became followers, and the light showed them everything but the sea.
• Ayah 61The two hosts come into sight of each other, and fear speaks first, in the grammar of certainty: we are overtaken.
• Ayah 62At the sea's edge, the army in sight, Musa answers 'we are overtaken' with three things: a refusal, a presence and a promised road.
• Ayah 63At one word from Allah a shepherd's stick touched the sea, and the most restless thing on earth stood in walls like mountains.
• Ayah 64Pharaoh believed he was closing in on his prey, but Allah says He drew the pursuers, stage by stage, to that very spot.
• Ayah 65Allah brought Musa and every last one with him safely out of the sea, though many of them had panicked only minutes before.
• Ayah 66Once the last of the rescued was clear, Allah let the held water go, and the pursuing army that had filled the sea was drowned.
• Ayah 67The refrain first heard at 26:8 returns to close the surah's longest story: a sea split before witnesses, and still most did not believe.
• Ayah 68The refrain first heard at 26:9 returns after the sea, and the story has already shown whose might is real and whose mercy saves.
• Ayah 69Recite to them the news of Ibrahim: the forefather Makkah boasted of is called as witness against what had been built in his name.
• Ayah 70Ibrahim asks his father and people one short question, not to learn the answer, but so they will hear themselves give it.
• Ayah 71Asked for one word, they gave a proud speech: we worship idols, and we stay devoted to them all day long.
• Ayah 72Ibrahim's first test of any god is the plainest one: at the very moment you call on it, does it even hear you?
• Ayah 73Ibrahim asks what all worship is really for, hoped-for gain or feared harm, and shows that neither key was ever in the idols' hands.
• Ayah 74Asked whether their idols hear, help or harm, the people change the subject to their fathers, and one word, 'rather', quietly concedes everything.
• Ayah 75Having heard 'our fathers did it', Ibrahim asks his people to look, truly look, at what they have spent their lives worshipping.
• Ayah 76Ibrahim follows his people's appeal back to their most ancient fathers, and shows that age, however great, gives a belief no authority of its own.
• Ayah 77Ibrahim calls everything his people worship an enemy, then names one exception that was never on the list: the Lord of all the worlds.
• Ayah 78He created me once, and it is done; He guides me now, and again, and in every moment after.
• Ayah 79He alone feeds me and gives me drink: not a distant Lord of harvests only, but the One who lifts the cup to my lips.
• Ayah 80Ibrahim keeps his illness for himself and gives his healing to his Lord, the One who lifts a failing body to the rim of safety.
• Ayah 81Ibrahim lists his own death among his Lord's kindnesses, then adds one word, 'then', and a life on the far side of it.
• Ayah 82Ibrahim ends his portrait of his Lord with a hope, leaning like the first raindrops towards a forgiveness that is never owed.
• Ayah 83His praise finished, Ibrahim turns to his Lord and asks for judgement that reins him in, and a place among the righteous ahead.
• Ayah 84Ibrahim asks for a true tongue among those who come after: deeds worth copying, and an account of him that is good and true.
• Ayah 85Having asked for a good name on earth, Ibrahim asks for what no name can secure: a place among the Garden's heirs.
• Ayah 86Ibrahim turns from his own needs to the father who threatened him, calls him 'my father', names his straying honestly and asks forgiveness.
• Ayah 87Allah's friend asks not to be disgraced on the Day all are raised; on that Day he will quote these words back to his Lord.
• Ayah 88Ibrahim names the two things every human trusts to protect them, money and the people who stand with us; on that Day neither will help.
• Ayah 89When nothing you owned or raised can carry you, one thing gets through: a heart that reaches Allah whole, with no war left in it.
• Ayah 90Before a word is said about the Fire, the Garden is drawn close to those who guarded themselves, near enough to see.
• Ayah 91The Fire is brought into full view for those who strayed; the Quran shows it to us now, while an exit remains.
• Ayah 92On the Day, those who served false gods are asked one word, where, and the things they used to worship are nowhere.
• Ayah 93On the Day, the helpers people placed between themselves and Allah are asked one question: can they help you, or even help themselves?
• Ayah 94The false gods and their strayers are tumbled into the Fire, face over face, in a fall that does not stop at the first blow.
• Ayah 95Iblis swore to lead them all astray; here his whole army follows his promise to its end, every soldier, not one left behind.
• Ayah 96Inside the Fire they finally speak the truth, yet even while confessing they are still quarrelling with those around them.
• Ayah 97Thrown into the Fire beside the idols they served, the worshippers swear by Allah, sincerely at last, that their error had been plain all along.
• Ayah 98The worshippers name their error exactly: they had set created things level with the Lord of all the worlds, in love, reverence and obedience.
• Ayah 99Straight after confessing, the people of the Fire point elsewhere: only the criminals misled us, as if being led removed their own part in following.
• Ayah 100Having confessed, the people of the Fire face the result: of all the intercessors they once counted on, not one stands beside them now.
• Ayah 101Last of all, the lost miss not a rescuer but one true friend who would ache for them.
• Ayah 102The lost beg for one more turn at life so they can believe, a wish too late for them and just in time for us.
• Ayah 103The refrain of 26:8 closes Ibrahim's story, where the sign is an argument and a Day still to come.
• Ayah 104The refrain of 26:9 follows Ibrahim's portrait of his Lord, gathering everything he said of Him into two names.
• Ayah 105One man came to Nuh's people, yet they are said to have denied the messengers, because whoever rejects one rejects the message they all carried.
• Ayah 106Nuh's first words to his people echo 37:124, but here he is named their brother, one of their own, calling them to be mindful.
• Ayah 107Before asking anything, Nuh tells his people two things about himself: he was sent, and he can be trusted with what he carries.
• Ayah 108Trust established, Nuh asks two things in order: guard yourselves with Allah first, then follow me in what I bring from Him.
• Ayah 109Nuh asks his people for nothing; his wage is owed by the Lord of all the worlds, and no one else can pay it.
• Ayah 110Nuh repeats his call word for word, but on new ground: a man who wants nothing from you has a second claim on your hearing.
• Ayah 111Nuh's people never tested his message; they inspected his followers, and a sneer at the poor became their reason to refuse the truth.
• Ayah 112Nuh refuses to audit his followers' pasts or motives: his task is the call and their visible faith, not their hidden lives.
• Ayah 113Nuh hands every follower's final account to his Lord alone, and tells the proud that their contempt shows a missing sense, not superior knowledge.
• Ayah 114Asked to clear out the poor as the price of the nobles' faith, Nuh refuses as a matter of who he is.
• Ayah 115Asked to drive away his poorest followers, Nuh defines his whole task in five words: to warn, and to make the warning plain.
• Ayah 116Out of answers after Nuh's long call, his people reached for the oldest argument of all: stop, or we will stone you.
• Ayah 117Threatened with stoning, Nuh turns to his Lord and names one wound only: that his own people called the truth a lie.
• Ayah 118Nuh asks his Lord to open the deadlock between him and his people, and to bring him out safely with the believers beside him.
• Ayah 119Allah answered Nuh's plea in its own words, bringing him and everyone with him safely through in a ship packed to its last space.
• Ayah 120Only after the ark was safe did Allah drown those who had stayed behind, ending a whole defiant people in four plain words.
• Ayah 121The refrain first heard at 26:8 closes Nuh's story: an ark left as a sign for every age, and still most did not believe.
• Ayah 122The refrain first heard at 26:9 closes the flood: the Mighty drowned the defiant, and the Merciful carried the believers through.
• Ayah 123The mighty people of ʿĀd, heirs of the world the flood had cleared, denied every messenger by denying the one sent to them.
• Ayah 124Hud, a brother from among ʿĀd, opened with the same question Nuh asked: will you not guard yourselves against Allah's displeasure?
• Ayah 125Hud tells ʿĀd what Nuh told his people: I am a messenger to you, and you already know I can be trusted.
• Ayah 126Hud tells the strongest people of his age to guard themselves with Allah and follow him, and the order of those words matters.
• Ayah 127Hud asks nothing of the wealthiest people of his age; his wage rests with the Lord of all the worlds.
• Ayah 128Hud asks a people who crowned every rise with a monument why they build for nothing but to be seen.
• Ayah 129Hud names the second sickness of ʿĀd: they built great works as though they would never die.
• Ayah 130Hud's third charge: whenever ʿĀd seized anyone, they seized with the full, merciless force of tyrants.
• Ayah 131After naming their towers, strongholds and violence, Hud gives one cure: guard yourselves with Allah, and follow the messenger who asks nothing of you.
• Ayah 132Hud stops naming Allah and describes Him instead: the One who kept supplying you, with gifts you already know by heart.
• Ayah 133Hud names the two things 'Ad counted as their strength, the herd and the sons, and files both under the One who supplied them.
• Ayah 134The list of gifts closes with orchards and springs: fruit above and clear water rising from below, two things no stronghold of 'Ad could make.
• Ayah 135Hud ends his plea not with a threat but with fear felt on behalf of people he loves, for a day too great to ignore.
• Ayah 136ʿAd answer a lifetime of counsel with a shrug: your words weigh the same as silence, and you were never a counsellor anyway.
• Ayah 137ʿAd's whole defence fits in one line: we are only doing what the ancients did, and your message is only what the ancients made up.
• Ayah 138ʿAd's last word is a declaration of immunity: we are simply not the kind of people who get punished.
• Ayah 139The refrain first heard at 26:8 closes the story of ʿAd: the strongest people ever made, and still most of them did not believe.
• Ayah 140The refrain first heard at 26:9 answers ʿAd's boast: the One they thought they could outmatch is the Mighty, and still the Merciful.
• Ayah 141Thamud turned away one man, Salih, yet the ayah says they denied the messengers: refusing one bearer of the truth refuses every bearer.
• Ayah 142Salih, one of Thamud's own, opens with the question every messenger in this surah asks: will you not guard yourselves?
• Ayah 143Salih tells the people who once pinned their hopes on him that he is a messenger sent for them, faithful to what he carries.
• Ayah 144To a comfortable, skilled people who lacked nothing, Salih says: guard yourselves with Allah, and follow me in what I bring from Him.
• Ayah 145Salih asks his people for nothing; whatever he is owed waits with the Lord of all the worlds, not with the valley they called home.
• Ayah 146Salih asks a people settled in plenty whether they truly expect to be left here, secure, forever, with no one ever coming back.
• Ayah 147Ṣāliḥ names their gardens and springs one by one, asking not whether comfort is wrong but whether it has become their idea of safety.
• Ayah 148Ṣāliḥ points past the harvest to the palm's first clusters, packed so soft they break in the hand: abundance at its richest and most fragile.
• Ayah 149Thamud cut homes out of solid mountain with a skill that became swagger, and one word holds both the craft and the pride.
• Ayah 150After listing every gift Thamud enjoyed, Ṣāliḥ draws the only conclusion that gratitude allows: so guard yourselves with Allah, and follow me.
• Ayah 151Salih tells the ordinary people of Thamud to stop yielding to the orders of the few whose excess had already spilled past every limit.
• Ayah 152The excessive spoil the land and never set it right, and the prophet who warns of them bears a name meaning one who mends.
• Ayah 153With no answer to Salih's warning, Thamud diagnosed him instead: bewitched over and over, or, on another reading, a mere creature that eats.
• Ayah 154Thamud tell Salih he is only a human like them and dare him to produce a sign; they will get exactly what they ask for.
• Ayah 155Asked for a sign, Salih points to a living she-camel and sets terms: her turn at the water, then theirs, on known days.
• Ayah 156Salih draws the line at the lightest touch of harm and names its cost in advance: a day made terrible by what falls in it.
• Ayah 157Three words hold the whole fall: they cut her down, and woke to a regret that grieved the consequence rather than the wrong.
• Ayah 158The punishment Salih named arrives as named, and the refrain of 26:8 closes a story whose sign was requested, granted, and fed them.
• Ayah 159The refrain of 26:9 closes Thamud's story: the Mighty levelled homes carved in mountains; the Merciful had fed them, waited, and saved the believers.
• Ayah 160A new story opens with its verdict: a people remembered only by the name of the man they rejected denied the messengers.
• Ayah 161Lut opens with the call every messenger in this surah makes, said by a man who came from elsewhere and became the town's brother.
• Ayah 162Lut tells a town that would later mock his household for its purity that he is a messenger they can trust.
• Ayah 163Lut asks a town where one appetite had become custom to guard themselves with Allah and follow him, before he names a single sin.
• Ayah 164Lut asks no wage of a town that will soon threaten to drive him out; his reward rests with the Lord of all the worlds.
• Ayah 165Lut puts a single question to his people, naming their practice with a covered word: out of all humankind, do you come to males?
• Ayah 166Lut names what his people kept leaving, the spouses their Lord created for them, and then the root of it: a people who cross limits.
• Ayah 167Lut's people answer his words with an ultimatum: stop forbidding us, or join the list of those we have already driven out.
• Ayah 168Threatened with exile, Lut neither pleads nor threatens back: he names his deepest loathing, and aims it squarely at their deed.
• Ayah 169Done arguing with a town that will not hear, Lut turns to his Lord: lift me and my family clear of what they do.
• Ayah 170Lut asked in five words; Allah answers in three, and a whole household walks out of a doomed town together.
• Ayah 171The rescue took Lut's whole household but one: a wife who shared his roof, but not his faith, and stayed with what was ending.
• Ayah 172Three words end a town: the people who threatened to drive Lut out are themselves rooted out, and lose even their name.
• Ayah 173The sky that waters fields poured stones on a town that had been warned, and the verdict on that rain is a single word: evil.
• Ayah 174The refrain of 26:8 closes Lut's story, where 'most of them' meant a whole town against a single household.
• Ayah 175The refrain of 26:9 follows one of the harshest endings in the surah, and still its last word is the Merciful.
• Ayah 176The seventh and last story opens on a people named not for a prophet or tribe, but for their tangled grove.
• Ayah 177Shuʿayb, sent to a people who were not his own tribe, opens with the question every messenger here asks: will you not guard yourselves?
• Ayah 178To a people who lived by buying and selling, Shuʿayb offers the one thing their market had lost: a man whose word can be trusted.
• Ayah 179For Shuʿayb's trading people, guarding themselves before Allah and obeying His messenger would be tested first at the counter, not the prayer mat.
• Ayah 180To traders who priced everything, Shuʿayb names one service with no price: his wage is owed by the Lord of all the worlds alone.
• Ayah 181Fill the measure you hand to others, and refuse to be the kind of person whose gain is always someone else's quiet loss.
• Ayah 182Weigh with a balance that is straight in itself, so that whatever you measure, and whoever you measure for, receives exactly what is true.
• Ayah 183Shu'ayb widens the charge from scales to everything people are owed, and names the small shaving as the first thread of ruin.
• Ayah 184After the scales, Shu'ayb names the One behind every customer: the Creator of you and of the vast, mountain-like multitudes who came before.
• Ayah 185The people of the Thicket reach for Thamud's exact insult, and here it opens a longer list of charges.
• Ayah 186They stack a second charge on the first, 'only a human like us', then condemn him as a liar on nothing firmer than a guess.
• Ayah 187Asked to fix their scales, the people answer with a dare about the sky, a demand made only by those who have already decided.
• Ayah 188Dared to bring down the sky, Shuʿayb neither curses nor performs; he hands it to the Lord who knows their deeds better than they do.
• Ayah 189They kept on denying, and the day of the canopy took them: a people of shady thickets undone beneath an overhanging cloud.
• Ayah 190The refrain of 26:8 is heard for the eighth and last time, over a people ruined for cheating at the scale.
• Ayah 191The refrain of 26:9 closes the last story: the Mighty was not cheated by the cheats, and the Merciful had the final word.
• Ayah 192After seven stories of ruin and rescue, the surah turns to the Book that told them: it came down from the Lord of every world.
• Ayah 193The Book did not drift down by chance; the trustworthy Spirit carried it from the Lord of the worlds, unaltered, down a chain of trust.
• Ayah 194The Quran was set down on his heart, the noblest part of him, so that he could join the line of those who warn.
• Ayah 195Allah sent His speech in a plain tongue its first hearers already lived in, so no one could turn away claiming not to understand.
• Ayah 196What came to Muhammad ﷺ was no new invention: its mention and its message already stood in the scriptures of earlier peoples.
• Ayah 197The scholars of the Children of Israel, the very experts Makkah consulted, recognised what had come; their knowledge itself was a sign.
• Ayah 198Allah imagines the Quran sent down on someone who could not speak Arabic at all, to show that the refusal never lay in the messenger.
• Ayah 199Even a perfect recital from an impossible reciter would not have made them believers, because faith is not something proof can force into a heart.
• Ayah 200Like a thread drawn through a needle, denial passes into the hearts of those who have earned it, and settles there.
• Ayah 201Their denial has an end date, but the wrong one: they will believe only when they see the painful punishment, when believing no longer helps.
• Ayah 202The end they were warned about for years arrives all at once, and finds them busy with life, feeling nothing coming.
• Ayah 203Caught by what they denied, they ask for the one thing they had been given all along: a little more time.
• Ayah 204They dared the punishment to come early, never asking whose punishment it was, or how they would plead once it came.
• Ayah 205The ayah grants the best case, long and pleasant years, and asks you to picture it before reading on.
• Ayah 206However long the comfortable years, what was promised arrives, as it already has six times in this one surah.
• Ayah 207When the promised hour arrives, years of ease cannot stand in for what was missing, and even the memory of comfort is gone.
• Ayah 208The One who could end any town in an instant never did so without first sending people to warn it.
• Ayah 209Every warning was a reminder meant to save, and injustice is simply not His way.
• Ayah 210Against the claim that his Quran was a soothsayer's whisper, Allah states plainly that no devil ever brought it down.
• Ayah 211The devils could not have brought the Quran: it is nothing their nature would ever go looking for, and nothing their strength could ever carry.
• Ayah 212The devils were moved off to one side and cut off from heaven's speech, so the revelation arrived with no stolen word mixed in.
• Ayah 213Spoken to the one man who would never do it, 'call on no god beside Allah' reaches every other reader with double force.
• Ayah 214The call begins at home: like a lookout who sees raiders, the Prophet runs first to his own people and calls them by name.
• Ayah 215Warn the clan, the Prophet ﷺ is told, but come down like a settling bird beside everyone who follows you.
• Ayah 216If his own kin refuse him, the Prophet ﷺ is to say he is clear of what they do, never of who they are.
• Ayah 217Stepping clear of his clan's worship, he is told whom to lean on: One who cannot be overpowered and will not abandon His own.
• Ayah 218The One you rely on has not looked away: He sees you the moment you stand, to pray, to speak, or simply to keep going.
• Ayah 219The One who sees you stand alone at night also sees every bow and prostration you make in the middle of the rows.
• Ayah 220He alone hears every word you say and knows every meaning you could not say, so the one He has heard is never unheard.
• Ayah 221Accused of getting his words from devils, the Prophet ﷺ answers with a question: shall I tell you whom devils really visit?
• Ayah 222The devils come down on every habitual liar who has also fallen behind in his deeds: a false tongue and a lagging life.
• Ayah 223Voices claiming hidden knowledge pass on overheard scraps, mostly false, so be careful what you lend your ear to.
• Ayah 224The ayah names the poets and then looks only at who follows them: a voice is weighed by the crowd walking in its track.
• Ayah 225The poets' wandering is not dreamy imagination but praise and blame cut loose from truth, a voice crossing every field and fed by none.
• Ayah 226The poets' third mark is a gap between tongue and hand: they describe deeds they never do, while the Messenger did everything he said.
• Ayah 227The surah of the poets ends on an open door for words joined to faith, deeds, remembrance and a measured reply, then on a warning.