Saba · Makki · ayah 3 of 54

Saba 34:3

وَقَالَ ٱلَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا۟ لَا تَأْتِينَا ٱلسَّاعَةُ ۖ قُلْ بَلَىٰ وَرَبِّى لَتَأْتِيَنَّكُمْ عَـٰلِمِ ٱلْغَيْبِ ۖ لَا يَعْزُبُ عَنْهُ مِثْقَالُ ذَرَّةٍ فِى ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٰتِ وَلَا فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ وَلَآ أَصْغَرُ مِن ذَٰلِكَ وَلَآ أَكْبَرُ إِلَّا فِى كِتَـٰبٍ مُّبِينٍ

“But those who disbelieve say, "The Hour will not come to us." Say, "Yes, by my Lord, it will surely come to you. [Allāh is] the Knower of the unseen." Not absent from Him is an atom's weight[1218] within the heavens or within the earth or [what is] smaller than that or greater, except that it is in a clear register -”

Saheeh International

Essence

Told the Hour will never come, the Prophet ﷺ swears it will, by a Lord from whom no speck, small or large, is far.

A reflection

No pasture too far for Him

Long before phones and fences, a herdsman would take his flock to grazing so distant that he did not come home at night. The Arabs called him ʿāzib. Pasture that far off, hard to reach, was ʿāzib too. The lexicons give this as the root's picture: being far away, out of reach, gone beyond the camp's sight. It is the established sense.

That is the verb in this ayah. Lā yaʿzubu ʿanhu mithqālu dharratin: not a speck's weight is ʿāzib from Him. Nothing is out on a far range. Nothing has wandered beyond His sight.

Picture a shepherd on a Cumbrian fell when the fog comes down. He has walked these hills for forty years. Yet by evening three ewes are missing, and he spends the night with a torch, calling. His knowledge is real and hard-won, and it has a horizon. Fog is enough to break it.

We all have horizons like that. We lose track of our children's inner lives, our own money, our own motives. Yet the ego talks as if its knowledge were complete. 'I know my business inside out.' 'I know exactly who he is.' Most of our certainties end where the fog begins.

The ayah names Him ʿālim al-ghayb, the Knower of the unseen. Some reciters read ʿallām, an intensive form: the One who knows the unseen through and through. For Him there is no far pasture and no fog. This is not said to boast. It answers people who claimed a body scattered in the earth was beyond recall. Their problem was a problem of distance, and He has none.

Our pride shrinks at that, and something else grows. The parts of you that feel far off, the self you lost years ago, are not ʿāzib from Him either.

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.