Az-Zumar · Makki · ayah 51 of 75

Az-Zumar 39:51

فَأَصَابَهُمْ سَيِّـَٔاتُ مَا كَسَبُوا۟ ۚ وَٱلَّذِينَ ظَلَمُوا۟ مِنْ هَـٰٓؤُلَآءِ سَيُصِيبُهُمْ سَيِّـَٔاتُ مَا كَسَبُوا۟ وَمَا هُم بِمُعْجِزِينَ

“And the evil consequences of what they earned struck them. And those who have wronged of these [people] will be struck [i.e., afflicted] by the evil consequences of what they earned; and they will not cause failure.[1353]”

Saheeh International

Essence

What people loosed came back and found them; those repeating the same wrong will be found too, and no one outruns Allah.

A reflection

The arrow comes back along its line

The verb is aṣābahum: it struck them. Its root carries a picture the first hearers knew from the hunt and the sky. The lexicons say it means something coming down and settling in its place. Rain falling was ṣawb. An arrow that flew true and struck its target aṣāba. A muṣība, a calamity, is the blow that finds you.

And what finds them here is sayyiʾātu mā kasabū, the evils of what they earned. Several commentaries explain that it means the recompense of those evils. One adds that the recompense is called an 'evil' to match the deed. Another ayah does the same: the recompense of an evil is an evil like it (42:40).

Put the two together and the picture is precise. A person spends years loosing arrows: a lie here, a cruelty there, a refusal of the truth. They fly off and seem to vanish. The ayah says they come back. Not randomly, not as bad luck, but along their own line, landing exactly where they were aimed.

That is both frightening and strangely reassuring. Frightening, because nothing loosed is lost. Reassuring, because the world is not chaotic. Its consequences have shape. They follow the line of the deed.

The same root gives the word ṣawāb, what is right: the word or act that hits the truth. Travellers crossing the desert would tell someone drifting off course: keep your ṣawb, your line.

So the root holds both possibilities in one picture. Every act is an arrow. Some fly true and hit what is right. Some come back and hit their archer. The question for each day is simply where I am aiming.

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.