Ash-Shu'ara · Makki · ayah 207 of 227

Ash-Shu'ara 26:207

مَآ أَغْنَىٰ عَنْهُم مَّا كَانُوا۟ يُمَتَّعُونَ

“They would not be availed by the enjoyment with which they were provided.”

Saheeh International

Essence

When the promised hour arrives, years of ease cannot stand in for what was missing, and even the memory of comfort is gone.

A reflection

The enough that was not enough

The verb at the heart of this ayah is aghnā. Its root is about sufficiency: having enough. The lexicons say one thing yughnī another when it stands in for it and is enough. People ghanū in a place when they settled there content, needing nowhere else. Only later does the word come to mean wealth. With the small word ʿan after it, it means to avail: to be enough on someone's behalf.

So the ayah asks something sharper than whether their wealth helped them. It asks whether their enjoyment could do the job they had given it. They had made their comfort a substitute. It was meant to be enough, so that Allah and the meeting with Him would not be needed. When the promised thing came, the substitute stood in for nothing.

Picture a retired engineer who has prepared for every power cut. He has a diesel generator in the garage, solar panels on the roof and fuel in sealed cans. He tests it all on the first Sunday of each month. One winter night his wife collapses in the kitchen with a stroke. The lights are on. The heating works. Every system he built hums perfectly. Not one of them can do the one thing now needed.

His preparations were not foolish. They were simply ready for the wrong emergency. That is the picture inside mā aghnā. Nothing about the generator failed. It was never able to stand in for what that night required.

The first hearers would have felt this at once. The root pictures a person content where they are, needing nowhere else. The people of this ayah were exactly that: settled, comfortable, needing no one. The ayah does not mock their comfort. It shows where it ran out.

The question it leaves is practical. What in my life have I quietly asked to be enough for me, in place of Allah? Savings, health, reputation, a family that will rally round? Each is a real blessing. None was built to carry that weight.

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.