Ali 'Imran · Madani · ayah 145 of 200

Ali 'Imran 3:145

وَمَا كَانَ لِنَفْسٍ أَن تَمُوتَ إِلَّا بِإِذْنِ ٱللَّهِ كِتَـٰبًا مُّؤَجَّلًا ۗ وَمَن يُرِدْ ثَوَابَ ٱلدُّنْيَا نُؤْتِهِۦ مِنْهَا وَمَن يُرِدْ ثَوَابَ ٱلْـَٔاخِرَةِ نُؤْتِهِۦ مِنْهَا ۚ وَسَنَجْزِى ٱلشَّـٰكِرِينَ

“And it is not [possible] for one to die except by permission of Allāh at a decree determined. And whoever desires the reward of this world - We will give him thereof; and whoever desires the reward of the Hereafter - We will give him thereof. And We will reward the grateful.”

Saheeh International

Essence

No soul dies except by Allah's leave, at a written term; whoever wants this world's return gets some, and whoever wants the next gets that.

A reflection

The water was always going to run on that day

In a manual signal box the working timetable hangs on the wall. The signalman's entire craft is setting the road for trains whose times he did not choose and cannot move by one minute. He is not a spectator. He is also not the author.

The ayah puts two words together that settle a great deal: a writing, with a term.

The lexicons are careful about that second word. The one here, ajal, is the far limit of a time. A debt falls due. A waiting period ends. A life runs out. And beside it in the same entry sits the māʾjal. A wide basin where well water is held back for days, then released into the crops. That is established.

So the picture under the word is not a sudden flood. It is water held, on purpose, until the day it was always going to run.

And the first clause is stronger than most translations manage. Not that a soul will not die without permission, but that it is not for a soul to die except by His leave.

The commentaries then give several readings of that word for leave. His command to the angel. His bringing into being, as in 'Be, and it is' (16:40). His leaving a thing to run, rather than holding it back by force. His knowledge of the hour. One early authority read it simply as His decree and His measure.

Then a classical commentator draws a line through most of our thinking. The term of death is the time at which, in His knowledge, the spirit parts from the body. So when a man is killed, we know this was his term. It is not sound to say that had he not been killed he would have lived.

Our sense of being in charge is mostly built of counterfactuals. If I had left ten minutes earlier. If we had taken the other road. Each one is a small claim to authorship, resting on an assumption the ayah denies: that the hour was negotiable.

The arrogance is subtle, because it wears the clothes of responsibility. We say we are being careful, and underneath we believe the careful are the ones who stay.

A reader may ask whether a Lord who announces that He holds every term wants admiration for the power. Notice the setting. This is said to people who have just buried seventy of their own, to get them off the floor. A boast is aimed at an audience. This is aimed at the bereaved.

So the humble reading is also the restful one. Your job was never the timetable. It was the setting of the road.

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.