Ali 'Imran · Madani · ayah 140 of 200

Ali 'Imran 3:140

إِن يَمْسَسْكُمْ قَرْحٌ فَقَدْ مَسَّ ٱلْقَوْمَ قَرْحٌ مِّثْلُهُۥ ۚ وَتِلْكَ ٱلْأَيَّامُ نُدَاوِلُهَا بَيْنَ ٱلنَّاسِ وَلِيَعْلَمَ ٱللَّهُ ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ وَيَتَّخِذَ مِنكُمْ شُهَدَآءَ ۗ وَٱللَّهُ لَا يُحِبُّ ٱلظَّـٰلِمِينَ

“If a wound should touch you - there has already touched the [opposing] people a wound similar to it. And these days [of varying conditions] We alternate among the people so that Allāh may make evident those who believe and [may] take to Himself from among you martyrs - and Allāh does not like the wrongdoers -”

Saheeh International

Essence

The other side took a wound like yours, and these days are turned about among people, to show up the believers and take witnesses.

A reflection

Passed round the circle, resting with nobody

A town's chain of office has a hundred and twelve names engraved along its links. Each wearer discovers two things in the first month. It is heavier than it looks. And it is measured in one-year lengths.

The ayah uses a word built for exactly that.

The lexicons give the root as a thing shifting from one place to another. Tadāwala l-qawmu l-shayʾ is for a thing to pass from some of them to others. The picture is of something handed round a circle, resting with nobody. A work on near-synonyms calls a dawla a gladdening state that moves from one people to another. That is established.

The same word turns up in a very different setting: so that it may not be a thing circulated only among your rich (59:7).

And a classical commentator reads this clause as a statement about the whole world. The days of this life are turns. Their pleasures do not stay, and neither do their harms. One day brings a man joy and his enemy grief, and another day runs the other way, and nothing of its states remains.

Then notice who is holding it. We turn them about. First person. Not the days revolving on their own, not fortune, not a cycle.

Another commentator points out that the verb is in the continuous form on purpose. This turning is a settled way, running among all nations until His command comes. And one early authority read mankind here as the rulers.

This is where the ego has nowhere left to stand.

We speak of building something that will last, and we mean a reputation, a firm, a standing. The arrogant version of that is to imagine the chain is a possession. The sentence says the links are being handed round, and the hand doing the handing is not ours. Nobody in the engraved list chose their year, and none of them set its length.

So pride here is not simply ugly. It is a mistake about the tense you are living in.

A fair question follows. Does a Lord who declares that He turns the days want to be admired for it? Look at what He does with the information. He gives it to the side that has just lost, as comfort, before anyone has praised Him for anything. A boaster announces his power when he is winning and has an audience. This is told to wounded people in order to get them on their feet by morning.

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.