An-Naml · Makki · ayah 50 of 93

An-Naml 27:50

وَمَكَرُوا۟ مَكْرًا وَمَكَرْنَا مَكْرًا وَهُمْ لَا يَشْعُرُونَ

“And they planned a plan, and We planned a plan, while they perceived not.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Nine men laid a secret plan by night, while Allah's plan ran over theirs unfelt, not a hair's touch of it.

A reflection

They never felt a single hair of it

A bank's security team notices someone probing its network at night. They do not shut the door. Instead they build a decoy server, full of files that look valuable and are worthless. The intruder slips in and feels clever. He copies folders, covers his tracks and congratulates himself. Every keystroke he types appears on a screen across the city, where three people are quietly drinking coffee.

That is the shape of this ayah's last words. Wa-hum lā yashʿurūn: and they did not perceive. Nine men had sworn an oath together to kill Ṣāliḥ and his family by night (27:49). Their alibi was ready. They believed they were the only ones in the dark who could see.

The root of yashʿurūn is also the root of hair, shaʿr. The lexicons join the two. Shaʿartu first meant 'I touched the hair', and from it came 'I knew'. It is a knowing as fine as feeling one hair move on the skin. So the phrase is sharper than 'they did not know'. Not even a hair's touch of the plan closing round them reached them.

One early explanation sets the two halves side by side. They plotted against Ṣāliḥ, and Allah plotted against them. They did not perceive His plan, and He perceived theirs.

Here the ego is cut down to size. Every schemer's pride rests on one belief: I see more than the others. It is the private pleasure of being the one who knows. The ayah takes that pleasure away. The plotter is never the best-informed person in the room. He is the least informed, because he forgot to count the One who sees.

Allah does not tell this because He enjoys being feared or needs His cleverness admired. He is free of all need (35:15). He tells it so that the one plotted against can breathe, and the would-be plotter can stop before he starts.

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.