Ash-Shu'ara · Makki · ayah 183 of 227

Ash-Shu'ara 26:183

وَلَا تَبْخَسُوا۟ ٱلنَّاسَ أَشْيَآءَهُمْ وَلَا تَعْثَوْا۟ فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ مُفْسِدِينَ

“And do not deprive people of their due and do not commit abuse on earth, spreading corruption.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Shu'ayb widens the charge from scales to everything people are owed, and names the small shaving as the first thread of ruin.

A reflection

From the measuring cup to everything a person is owed

The two ayat before this one are about measures and scales. Then Shu'ayb steps back and uses a wider word: ashyāʾahum, "their things". Not their grain, not their oil. Their things.

The classical commentators noticed the widening. One says the prohibition covers every right that has been established for anyone, so that it is not eaten into. It covers every property too: it is not to be seized, nibbled at, or used without its owner's leave. Another notes the plural reaches every kind of thing, great or small, because this people shaved off everything they touched. The same commentator adds that the unjust levy taken at a market gate was itself called bakhs.

So the ayah follows the habit out of the market and into the rest of life. A freelance illustrator sends an invoice for a book cover. Payment arrives on time, which pleases her, until she reads the figure. It is a little short. A line in the remittance says "admin adjustment". Nobody explains it. The sum is too small to fight over, which is exactly why it was taken.

No scale was touched. No cup was shaken. Yet in the language of this ayah, her thing was bakhs-ed. Her due was rounded down by someone who knew she would let it go.

Once the word is heard this widely, it reaches places a modern reader does not expect. The refund that arrives as a voucher. The bill with a line nobody explains. The credit that is owed and never given. The loan of a book, a tool or a favour, never returned.

Shu'ayb's people did not think of themselves as thieves. They thought of themselves as traders with sharp margins. The ayah refuses that comfort. Whatever someone is owed, in coin, in time or in fairness, belongs to them. Taking any slice of it is the same act, whatever it is called on the paperwork.

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.