Ash-Shu'ara · Makki · ayah 129 of 227

Ash-Shu'ara 26:129

وَتَتَّخِذُونَ مَصَانِعَ لَعَلَّكُمْ تَخْلُدُونَ

“And take for yourselves constructions [i.e., palaces and fortresses] that you might abide eternally?”

Saheeh International

Essence

Hud names the second sickness of ʿĀd: they built great works as though they would never die.

A reflection

Two ways to live 'as if'

The small word laʿalla usually carries hope: perhaps, so that. Read that way, ʿĀd built their strongholds hoping to live for ever. But early readers heard something sharper. One of the Companions reportedly read the ayah 'as if you will live for ever'. An early authority explained it the same way, and one classical commentary notes that al-Bukhari's Sahih glosses the word here as likeness. Whether they hoped it or merely acted it, the result was the same. They built like immortals.

Now set that beside another 'as if'. The Prophet ﷺ once took hold of a young Companion's shoulder. 'Be in this world as if you were a stranger, or a traveller passing through' (Sahih al-Bukhari). ʿĀd lived as if they would stay for ever. The believer is taught to live as if he is only passing.

A man of sixty-eight lays a sandstone patio behind his house. The supplier promises it will last fifty years. 'That'll see me out,' he jokes to his neighbour, and they both laugh. The joke is honest. The patio will outlast him, and he knows it. ʿĀd's mistake was to forget that line of the joke.

One classical theologian names the fault exactly. Building in this way shows long hope and heedlessness that this world is a place of passing, not a place of settling. The stone is not the sin. The forgetting is.

Every life is lived inside one 'as if' or the other. Each morning, the choice is which one you will build under.

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.