Al-'Ankabut · Makki · ayah 4 of 69

Al-'Ankabut 29:4

أَمْ حَسِبَ ٱلَّذِينَ يَعْمَلُونَ ٱلسَّيِّـَٔاتِ أَن يَسْبِقُونَا ۚ سَآءَ مَا يَحْكُمُونَ

“Or do those who do evil deeds think they can outrun [i.e., escape] Us? Evil is what they judge.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Right after warning believers that faith will be tested, the ayah turns to the other camp: do evildoers imagine they can outrun Us?

A reflection

The runner on His treadmill

Picture a man on a treadmill in a gym's front window. He is sprinting, red-faced, eyes fixed on the street outside. Every stride feels like distance. He has not moved a metre.

This ayah asks a question with the same shape: do those who do evil deeds think they can outrun Us? The verb is yasbiqūnā: to get ahead of Us, to slip past and leave Us behind. The early explanations gloss it as escaping Us, so that We cannot reach them.

Notice the pronoun. Not 'outrun the law' or 'outrun the consequences'. Us. The ayah will not let the wrongdoer pretend he is racing circumstances. He is racing the One who made the road, the legs and the breath in them.

One classical writer catches it in a single picture. The man who turns away, hoping to escape, is only folding up the stages of his journey inside His hands. However many miles he covers, the miles themselves are held.

This is where the ego shrinks. Arrogance is not only loud boasting. It is the quiet assumption that I am quick enough, clever enough, hidden enough. The man who cheats and says 'nobody will know' has made a claim about Allah without noticing. He has decided that Allah is slow.

Is the warning itself a kind of boast? A boast seeks an audience's approval. Allah gains nothing from whether the runner believes Him. The question is asked for the runner's sake, so that he turns round before the road ends.

The humble person begins from the opposite end. Wherever I run, I am running inside His reach. That thought frightens only the one running away. To the one running towards Him, it is the safest sentence in the world.

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.