Ash-Shu'ara · Makki · ayah 182 of 227

Ash-Shu'ara 26:182

وَزِنُوا۟ بِٱلْقِسْطَاسِ ٱلْمُسْتَقِيمِ

“And weigh with an even [i.e., honest] balance.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Weigh with a balance that is straight in itself, so that whatever you measure, and whoever you measure for, receives exactly what is true.

A reflection

The straightness you ask for in every prayer

The balance Shuʿayb commands is mustaqīm, straight. It is the same word a believer says many times a day in al-Fātiḥa: guide us to the straight path, al-ṣirāṭ al-mustaqīm (1:6).

The root pictures something standing upright, a stick set straight with no bend in it. A straight road has no detours. A straight balance has no lean. One adjective covers the road to Allah and the beam over the shop counter.

Picture a grocer who slips into the back room at noon. He lays a mat between boxes of tinned tomatoes and prays. Several times he asks for the straight path. Then he folds the mat and returns to the counter, where the scale reads a little heavy. He set it that way years ago.

He has asked Allah for straightness on the mat and refused it on the counter. The prayer and the scale use the same word. He uses it in one place and forgets it in the other.

Most of us are not grocers, but we know the pattern. We ask for guidance in the morning and cut a corner by lunchtime, hardly noticing the two belong together.

This ayah closes the gap. The straight path is not only a road of belief somewhere far off. It runs through the shop, the office, the kitchen table where the household bills are split. Every time you weigh something for another person, you are walking a short stretch of it. The next time you recite al-Fātiḥa, think of the instruments in your own hands. Ask for a straight path, and check that your scale agrees.

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.