An-Naml · Makki · ayah 60 of 93

An-Naml 27:60

أَمَّنْ خَلَقَ ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٰتِ وَٱلْأَرْضَ وَأَنزَلَ لَكُم مِّنَ ٱلسَّمَآءِ مَآءً فَأَنۢبَتْنَا بِهِۦ حَدَآئِقَ ذَاتَ بَهْجَةٍ مَّا كَانَ لَكُمْ أَن تُنۢبِتُوا۟ شَجَرَهَآ ۗ أَءِلَـٰهٌ مَّعَ ٱللَّهِ ۚ بَلْ هُمْ قَوْمٌ يَعْدِلُونَ

“[More precisely], is He [not best] who created the heavens and the earth and sent down for you rain from the sky, causing to grow thereby gardens of joyful beauty which you could not [otherwise] have grown the trees thereof? Is there a deity with Allāh?[1083] [No], but they are a people who ascribe equals [to Him].”

Saheeh International

Essence

You can build the wall around a garden, water it and wait; the tree inside it you have never once made grow.

A reflection

You built the wall, not the tree

At a summer flower show, a rose breeder stands beside his display. A new variety, ten years in the making, carries his name on a printed label. Visitors photograph it. A judge pins a card to the table. He has earned the moment, and he knows it.

Ask him how the rose grew, though, and an honest breeder goes quiet. He chose the parents. He dusted the pollen on with a brush. He sowed thousands of seeds and kept the few worth keeping. Not one of those seeds split because he told it to.

The ayah reads as if it knows that conversation. It begins in the third person: He created, He sent down. Then, at the moment of growth, it changes voice. Fa-anbatnā: so We made grow.

A theological commentary asks why. No sensible person doubts who made the sky, it says. The doubt arises at the tree. A man says: I put the seed in good ground, I watered it, I gave it sun. Whoever does the cause does the effect. So I made it grow.

The change to 'We' answers him to his face. Then the next words close the door: mā kāna lakum an tunbitū shajarahā, it was never yours to make their trees grow. A rhetorical commentary notes that the phrasing makes it not merely hard but impossible.

The theological commentary adds a sharper point. If we could make trees grow, we would not need to plant and then wait patiently for fruit. And even when the crop turns out as we hoped, we cannot fully say what it is, how much, or how. How can you be the maker of what you cannot describe?

Here the ego shrinks to its true size, which is not zero. The breeder's skill is real, and his name on the label is fair. But a ḥadīqa, the commentaries and lexicons say, was a garden with a wall around it. People build the wall. Allah makes what grows inside it.

So the humble answer is not false modesty. It is accuracy. Put your name on the label if you must. Then remember whose rose it is.

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.