Ash-Shu'ara · Makki · ayah 7 of 227

Ash-Shu'ara 26:7

أَوَلَمْ يَرَوْا۟ إِلَى ٱلْأَرْضِ كَمْ أَنۢبَتْنَا فِيهَا مِن كُلِّ زَوْجٍ كَرِيمٍ

“Did they not look at the earth - how much We have produced therein from every noble kind?”

Saheeh International

Essence

Look down at the ground under your feet: every kind of noble, generous growth, beyond counting, and every one of them caused by Him.

A reflection

We will feed the world, says the man on stage

A farming conference in a glass hall. The chief executive of a growing-technology company walks on to music. Behind him a screen shows lettuces stacked to the ceiling under violet light. "We will feed the world," he says. The applause is long.

He has built something clever. His sensors measure water to the millilitre. But ask him to make one lettuce seed decide to split, push a root down and a leaf up, and he has nothing to offer. Nobody in the hall does. They arrange conditions. They have never caused a single thing to grow.

The ayah uses one verb for the whole green earth: anbatnā, We caused to grow. It is the causative form. The plant does the growing; Allah causes it. And the speaker is "We", the plural of majesty. One concise modern commentary adds the plain conclusion: none can make these plants grow except the Lord of the worlds.

This is where the ego shrinks. Every harvest festival, every prize at a show, every proud post of a first tomato carries a quiet overstatement. We did the digging, and the digging is real. The growing was never ours. Pride in a garden is pride in having stood near a miracle with a watering can.

A fair question follows. Why does Allah keep pointing at what He has made? Is this a need to be noticed? Read the opening of the surah. The pointing comes after people refused every reminder. One commentator says Allah turns here to His greatness for the sake of those who had dared to deny. It is a door held open after they had walked past every other. The pointing is for the one who looks. Allah loses nothing if the conference never thanks Him. The man on stage loses the truth about himself.

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.