Ar-Rum · Makki · ayah 54 of 60

Ar-Rum 30:54

۞ ٱللَّهُ ٱلَّذِى خَلَقَكُم مِّن ضَعْفٍ ثُمَّ جَعَلَ مِنۢ بَعْدِ ضَعْفٍ قُوَّةً ثُمَّ جَعَلَ مِنۢ بَعْدِ قُوَّةٍ ضَعْفًا وَشَيْبَةً ۚ يَخْلُقُ مَا يَشَآءُ ۖ وَهُوَ ٱلْعَلِيمُ ٱلْقَدِيرُ

“Allāh is the one who created you from weakness, then made after weakness strength, then made after strength weakness and white hair. He creates what He wills, and He is the Knowing, the Competent.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Your strength stands between two weaknesses, each placed by Allah, who knows every stage of you and is able to bring it about.

A reflection

Strength placed between two weaknesses

Allāhu alladhī khalaqakum min ḍaʿfin: Allah is the One who created you from weakness. The sentence opens with His name, and every verb after it is His. He created. He made the strength. He made the weakness that follows. You are only ever the object of the verbs.

A classical scholar of the heart summed up this ayah in one line. A person's strength stands between two weaknesses, and his life between two deaths. Growth comes gradually, he wrote, and after forty the decline comes just as gradually.

Picture a retired fell runner in his late seventies. His course record from 1979 still hangs, framed, on the wall of the village pub. On Sunday he walks the lower path with his grandson. At the first stile he stops and holds out his arm to be helped over. The record on the wall did not come with him.

That is the ego's mistake about strength. We treat it as something we built, and therefore own. The ayah says jaʿala: He made it, and placed it there. It is a middle chapter, with weakness written on either side.

Does Allah describe our decline to belittle us, or to be praised for His power? He needs neither. He is free of all need, and we are the ones in need of Him (35:15). The ayah tells you this for your own sake. A man who knows his strength is lent will not swagger with it. Nor will he despair when it is called back.

Pride feeds on the middle chapter alone. Humility reads the whole page. It begins with weakness, passes through strength, and closes on weakness and white hair. Then it names the Author: wa huwa al-ʿAlīmu al-Qadīr.

So when you feel strongest this week, say quietly who made that strength. It is the surest way to stop it making you arrogant.

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.