Az-Zumar · Makki · ayah 54 of 75

Az-Zumar 39:54

وَأَنِيبُوٓا۟ إِلَىٰ رَبِّكُمْ وَأَسْلِمُوا۟ لَهُۥ مِن قَبْلِ أَن يَأْتِيَكُمُ ٱلْعَذَابُ ثُمَّ لَا تُنصَرُونَ

“And return [in repentance] to your Lord and submit to Him before the punishment comes upon you; then you will not be helped.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Straight after 'do not despair' comes the next step: turn back to your Lord and hand yourself over, while the door is still open.

A reflection

Like bees coming home to the hive

The command is anībū: turn back. Its root has a picture the first hearers would have known from the hillside. The lexicons say it means growing used to a place and coming back to it. Bees were called nawb, because they go out to graze and return to their hive. Herders took camels to water at dawn and were back at the water by evening.

Ināba, then, is not a single dramatic U-turn. It is a habit of return. The bee does not come home once. It comes home every day, after every flight.

That is a great mercy for people who keep falling away. Picture a nurse who has started reading a page of the Quran each morning, and stopped, and started again. In two years she has restarted perhaps a dozen times. Each time she feels like a fraud. Then she hears this word explained, and something shifts. The returning is not the failure. The returning is the worship.

Several commentaries explain the turning as coming back to Him in obedience and repentance. One early scholar adds: the ināba is returning to obedience and pulling away from what you were in.

Allah needs none of this. He is free of all need (35:15). The hive is for the bee. The return is for the one who returns: to rest, to be fed, to be safe. Hearts find rest in His remembrance (13:28).

Many people today are exhausted by a sense of having drifted from themselves. The ayah's answer is simple and unglamorous. You do not have to fly perfectly. You have to keep coming home. And notice to whom: ilā rabbikum, to your Lord, the One who has been raising and providing for you all along.

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.