Ar-Rum · Makki · ayah 15 of 60

Ar-Rum 30:15

فَأَمَّا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ وَعَمِلُوا۟ ٱلصَّـٰلِحَـٰتِ فَهُمْ فِى رَوْضَةٍ يُحْبَرُونَ

“And as for those who had believed and done righteous deeds, they will be in a garden [of Paradise], delighted.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Those who believed and did good are placed in a meadow beyond description, where joy keeps arriving and shows on their faces.

A reflection

Green in a dry country

To understand rawḍa, picture the land the first hearers knew. Stony desert, sun-bleached rock, thorn scrub. Then, in a low and level place, the rainwater has gathered. Grass and flowers have grown there. They stay green long after the ground around them has dried.

That hollow was a rawḍa. The lexicons say the word is used only where there is both water and growth. A bare rise is not a rawḍa, however high. One commentator wrote that the Arabs had nothing finer to look at, nor sweeter to smell. He quoted an old poet who could think of no higher praise than a meadow after heavy rain. Their proverb for beauty was 'finer than an ostrich egg in a meadow'.

Picture a family driving through hills in late summer. For two hours the land has been brown and dusty. The children have stopped looking out of the window. Then the road dips, and there is a hollow round a spring: deep green, cool and full of birdsong. Someone says 'stop the car', and nobody argues.

That is the feeling the word was chosen to carry. It is not a garden after a garden. It is green after drought.

Notice also that the word is indefinite: 'in a meadow', not 'in the meadow'. The commentators say this is for magnifying it. In Arabic, leaving a noun undefined can mean it is too great to pin down.

So the reward is pictured through the eyes of people who knew thirst. That is not a limit on Paradise. It is a key to it. Whoever has longed for relief after a dry stretch already knows the shape of what is promised.

The dry stretch you are walking through now may be the very thing that will make the meadow mean something.

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.