Ar-Rum · Makki · ayah 49 of 60

Ar-Rum 30:49

وَإِن كَانُوا۟ مِن قَبْلِ أَن يُنَزَّلَ عَلَيْهِم مِّن قَبْلِهِۦ لَمُبْلِسِينَ

“Although they were, before it was sent down upon them - before that, in despair.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Before the rain came, and long before that, they had given up; Allah saw that despair in full, and the joy was measured against it.

A reflection

The guest who was a long time coming

A family has waited nineteen months for a transplant call. A hospital bag sits packed by the front door. Every time the phone rings, the room goes still. After a year, nobody looks at the bag any more. They step round it on the way out.

This ayah is about that kind of waiting. It says the people who rejoiced at the rain had been mublisīn: their hope cut off, with nothing left to say. And it says 'before' twice. Before it was sent down on them, before it, they had despaired.

One commentator heard the doubled word as a measure of time. Their last rain lay so far back that despair had set hard. So the rejoicing in the ayah before was in proportion to that long gloom. The length of the 'before' is what made the 'after' so sharp.

The verb for the rain's arrival has a picture of its own. Nuzūl was a rider coming down from his mount at a camp. He set down his baggage and stayed as a guest. What the hosts prepared for him was his nuzul. Here the rain is that guest. It comes down from a height, to stay, and the land becomes its host.

Notice too what the ayah does with the despair. It does not mock it or hide it. It records it, in Allah's own words, doubled for emphasis. Nothing of those dry months went unseen.

If you are living inside a long 'before', this is worth holding. Your waiting is known to the One who sends the guest. It is not wasted time on the way to relief. It is part of what the relief will mean when it comes.

Talk to Him while the bag waits by the door. Tell Him how long it has been. He already knows, and He still wants to hear it from you.

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.