Al-Qasas · Makki · ayah 59 of 88

Al-Qasas 28:59

وَمَا كَانَ رَبُّكَ مُهْلِكَ ٱلْقُرَىٰ حَتَّىٰ يَبْعَثَ فِىٓ أُمِّهَا رَسُولًا يَتْلُوا۟ عَلَيْهِمْ ءَايَـٰتِنَا ۚ وَمَا كُنَّا مُهْلِكِى ٱلْقُرَىٰٓ إِلَّا وَأَهْلُهَا ظَـٰلِمُونَ

“And never would your Lord have destroyed the cities until He had sent to their mother [i.e., principal city] a messenger reciting to them Our verses. And We would not destroy the cities except while their people were wrongdoers.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Your Lord never destroys a town before a messenger has recited His words to it, and never while its people are doing right.

A reflection

He does not use what He knows against you

A manager has a junior on his team he has quietly written off. He knows the type, he tells himself. So the junior is never given the difficult account, never put forward for promotion, never told why. The manager may even be right about him. But the junior never gets the chance to prove it either way.

Now read the opening of this ayah. Wa-mā kāna rabbuka muhlika al-qurā: your Lord was never one to destroy towns, until He sends a messenger. The construction with mā kāna says more than 'He did not'. One commentator glosses it as: it was never fitting, never His established way.

Two commentators then make a remarkable observation. Allah knows already how every town will respond. Yet He does not make His knowledge of them the proof against them. He sends a messenger anyway, to establish the proof in the open and cut off every excuse. The One whose knowledge is perfect still waits for people to choose in the light.

That is majesty of a kind we rarely practise. He owes no one an explanation. He could act on what He knows. Instead He binds Himself to a pattern, and announces it. Power that warns before it acts, when it has no need to, is a power that has nothing to prove.

Set beside it our own small judgements. We decide what a colleague is like from one meeting. We punish a child for what we are sure she was about to do. We cut off a relative because we know how the conversation would go. Our knowledge is partial, and we act on it with a confidence He, who knows all, does not use against His servants.

The ego shrinks a little at that. If the Lord of the worlds sends a reciter first, who are we to sentence anyone on the strength of a guess? Give the junior the account. Say the hard thing clearly. Then let the person choose.

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.