Ash-Shu'ara · Makki · ayah 152 of 227

Ash-Shu'ara 26:152

ٱلَّذِينَ يُفْسِدُونَ فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ وَلَا يُصْلِحُونَ

“Who cause corruption in the land and do not amend."”

Saheeh International

Essence

The excessive spoil the land and never set it right, and the prophet who warns of them bears a name meaning one who mends.

A reflection

His name was the word they refused

A woman has kept a sourdough starter alive for nine years. She feeds it every morning, keeps it warm in winter, and carries it in a jar when she travels. Her new flatmate, tidying the kitchen, pours boiling water into the jar to clean it. Nine years of tending end in a minute.

Listen to the letters in this ayah. The excessive yufsidūna, they spoil, wa-lā yuṣliḥūn, and they do not mend. The man saying it is Ṣāliḥ (26:142). His name and their failing are built from the same three letters, ṣ-l-ḥ. The one who stands for mending is describing the men who never mend.

The lexicons give the root a single meaning: the opposite of spoiling. A thing is ṣāliḥ when it is sound and fit for what it was made for. Leather fit for a sandal was ṣāliḥ for it. The Arabs used the verb for seasoning a cooking pot and for tending an animal until it thrived. These are slow pictures. Nobody seasons a pot in one evening.

That is the hidden contrast in the ayah. Spoiling is quick. Mending is tending, day after day. One commentary asks why "and they do not mend" is added at all. Its answer: their corruption was solid, with no good mixed into it. Another adds that "they spoil" alone could allow some mending now and then. The second clause closes that door.

So the excessive of Thamud left nothing slow and tended in their wake. They had nothing like the starter in the jar.

The question turns to us. What in my life am I tending slowly, the way a pot is seasoned? A friendship, a habit of prayer, a child's trust? And where am I the boiling water, undoing in a moment what someone else spent years building?

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.