Saba · Makki · ayah 49 of 54

Saba 34:49

قُلْ جَآءَ ٱلْحَقُّ وَمَا يُبْدِئُ ٱلْبَـٰطِلُ وَمَا يُعِيدُ

“Say, "The truth has come, and falsehood can neither begin [anything] nor repeat [it]."[1237]”

Saheeh International

Essence

The truth has arrived, and falsehood has no first move and no second: it can neither begin anything nor bring anything back.

A reflection

Neither begins nor repeats: words for a finished thing

The second half of the ayah sounds abstract in translation. Falsehood neither begins nor repeats. In Arabic it was a living idiom, and a grim one.

A living creature, one commentator explains, either starts an action or does it again. When it perishes, it does neither. So to say someone 'neither begins nor repeats' was to say he was finished. A pre-Islamic poet used the phrase of himself, alone and facing a king's sentence of death: today I neither begin nor repeat. Another commentator compares the way people say someone 'neither eats nor drinks'. It means he is dead.

The first verb carries a vivid picture, and it is established usage. Badʾ is the first act, like a well dug fresh in ground where no one had ever dug. The second, ʿawd, is doing a thing again; from it come habit, festival and the Return. Falsehood, says the ayah, can do neither. It digs no new well. It builds no habit that renews a life.

Read this way, the ayah is not only saying that falsehood lost a contest. It is a death notice. Truth has arrived, and the thing it faced has no first move left, and no second.

One classical commentator presses further. Was falsehood ever truly alive? He answers no. Truth is what exists and cannot be undone; falsehood is what cannot be made to exist. The arrival of truth did not kill something real. It showed that nothing solid had ever been there.

That is a strange comfort. What you feared was a giant may only have been a shape in the fog. When the light comes, you do not find a body. You find that the fog was all there was.

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.