Ya-Sin · Makki · ayah 82 of 83

Ya-Sin 36:82

إِنَّمَآ أَمْرُهُۥٓ إِذَآ أَرَادَ شَيْـًٔا أَن يَقُولَ لَهُۥ كُن فَيَكُونُ

“His command is only when He intends a thing that He says to it, "Be," and it is.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The sceptic measured Allah by human effort; the reply is the lightest word in the language: He says "Be", and the dead stand up.

A reflection

"Does God get tired at night, like Daddy?"

A six-year-old, being tucked into bed, asks her father a question. Does God get tired at night, like you do? It is a sweet question, and a revealing one. She can only imagine God by stretching what she knows. Her father is strong, but he gets tired. So perhaps God does too, only later.

Adults do the same thing with more sophisticated words. The sceptic in this passage did it with a bone. Who could give life to this? He measured what Allah could do by what a human could do. One commentator names the mistake exactly. They struck a likeness for Allah, he says, judging the unseen by the seen. In the world we see, making requires bodily tools, movement from place to place, and stretches of time. Allah creates by Be, and it is. How, he asks, can they strike the lowest likeness, when His is the highest likeness of all?

That is the majesty of this ayah. His command, when He wills a thing, is only to say to it: Be, and it is. No tools. No effort. No partner or helper, as a classical writer adds. Nothing to wait for, nothing to tire.

It lands on a quiet human arrogance: the assumption that our limits are the shape of reality. We do not say it aloud, but we picture God as a larger version of ourselves. The Quran says elsewhere that creating the heavens and earth did not tire Him at all.

The six-year-old deserves a gentle answer. The adult reader deserves a direct one. He does not get tired. He does not need to try. He only says Be.

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.