Ash-Shu'ara · Makki · ayah 166 of 227

Ash-Shu'ara 26:166

وَتَذَرُونَ مَا خَلَقَ لَكُمْ رَبُّكُم مِّنْ أَزْوَٰجِكُم ۚ بَلْ أَنتُمْ قَوْمٌ عَادُونَ

“And leave what your Lord has created for you as mates? But you are a people transgressing."”

Saheeh International

Essence

Lut names what his people kept leaving, the spouses their Lord created for them, and then the root of it: a people who cross limits.

A reflection

Desire has a home: what your Lord created for you

Before Lut names the wrong in this ayah, he names a gift. Mā khalaqa lakum rabbukum: what your Lord created for you. The commentators gloss it plainly. Your spouses were made for your enjoyment, and for the children who come through them.

That sentence corrects a picture many people carry of religion. They assume faith regards desire as dirty, something to be ashamed of and suppressed. This ayah says the opposite. Desire has a home, and the home was built on purpose. The One who placed the longing in a human being also created its lawful answer, and called it a gift for you.

The word for spouses, azwāj, makes the same point by its shape. A zawj in the lexicons is one of a pair: a single thing that has its counterpart. Two things that belong together are zawjān. The same word names a husband and a wife without distinction. Each is the other's zawj.

The Quran widens this into a law of creation. Of everything We created pairs, so that you may reflect (51:49). Matching is written into the world. So when Lut says min azwājikum, he is pointing at something larger than a custom. He is pointing at a design, and asking why they had stepped out of it.

This changes how the rest of the ayah reads. Lut is not scolding people for having desires. He is asking why they left the place where those desires were meant to rest. A religion that despised desire would not have spoken of spouses as something created for you.

If you have ever felt that faith and longing are enemies, read the first half of this ayah again. The longing was His idea. So was its home.

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.