Ash-Shu'ara · Makki · ayah 210 of 227

Ash-Shu'ara 26:210

وَمَا تَنَزَّلَتْ بِهِ ٱلشَّيَـٰطِينُ

“And the devils have not brought it [i.e., the revelation] down.[1062]”

Saheeh International

Essence

Against the claim that his Quran was a soothsayer's whisper, Allah states plainly that no devil ever brought it down.

A reflection

The far one, and the test of direction

When the first hearers heard shayṭān, they heard distance. The lexicons trace the root to being far. The Arabs said shaṭanat al-dār: the home is far away. A shaṭan was the long rope let down a deep well. A biʾr shaṭūn was a deep, crooked well; draw its bucket on one rope and it scraped the stone and tore. The shayṭān is the far one: far from the truth and from Allah's mercy, and working to make others far.

That image gives the ayah a quiet logic. The Quran pulls people near. It calls them to their Lord, to prayer, to kinship, to honest scales. A voice whose whole nature is distance could not be its source.

It also gives the reader a test that works on any voice in a day. Where does it take me: nearer or farther?

A man starts listening to a run of podcasts on his commute. They are sharp, funny and confident. Over a few months he notices something. After each episode he comes home a little more irritated with his wife. He finds her slower, her concerns smaller. He stops praying with the family in the evening because he is busy with his headphones. Nothing in the podcasts told him to do any of this. But every episode left him a step further from the people in his house.

The lexicons note that the word was given to every insolent rebel, among jinn, people and even animals. The Quran itself speaks of shayāṭīn of humankind and of the jinn (6:112). So the test is not about horns or smoke. It is about direction.

The ayah denies that the far ones carried the Quran. You can confirm that by its effect. Read it honestly for a month and notice where it takes you. Then apply the same test to everything else you let into your ears.

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.