An-Nisa · Madani · ayah 120 of 176

An-Nisa 4:120

يَعِدُهُمْ وَيُمَنِّيهِمْ ۖ وَمَا يَعِدُهُمُ ٱلشَّيْطَـٰنُ إِلَّا غُرُورًا

“He [i.e., Satan] promises them and arouses desire in them. But Satan does not promise them except delusion.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Satan keeps promising and keeps people wishing, but everything he promises is delusion: a fair outside with nothing inside.

A reflection

The wish and the appointed hour share a root

Yumannīhim: he makes them wish. The classical lexicons give the root a striking picture. It means measuring a thing out, and the decree taking effect. A weight on the scales was a manā. To wish was to measure something out in your own mind and picture it there.

From the very same root comes maniyya: death. It is called that because it is the measure set for every living thing.

So the wish and the appointed hour are cousins. One is the measure we draw for ourselves. The other is the measure Allah has already drawn. Satan's craft is to make us live inside the first and forget the second.

Commentators name the wishes he deals in. Long life. Worldly gains. The thought that there is no reckoning. Sahih Muslim records a saying of the Prophet ﷺ. The son of Adam grows old, yet two things in him grow young: eagerness for wealth, and eagerness for long life.

Picture a woman of eighty-one, home after a fright in hospital. Within a week she is planning the kitchen she will redo 'in a few years'. The phone call to the sister she fell out with can wait 'until things settle'. The kitchen gets a plan. The sister gets a delay.

That is the false wish in its gentlest form. Not a crime. Just a measure drawn too long.

Hope itself is not the problem. The Quran forbids despair of Allah's mercy (39:53). The problem is hope that pushes repentance and kindness into a future we have not been promised. So let your wishes be measured against the real measure. Make the call today.

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.