Ghafir · Makki · ayah 68 of 85

Ghafir 40:68

هُوَ ٱلَّذِى يُحْىِۦ وَيُمِيتُ ۖ فَإِذَا قَضَىٰٓ أَمْرًا فَإِنَّمَا يَقُولُ لَهُۥ كُن فَيَكُونُ

“He it is who gives life and causes death; and when He decrees a matter, He but says to it, "Be," and it is.”

Saheeh International

Essence

He alone gives life and takes it; and when He settles a matter, He only says to it, 'Be', and it is.

A reflection

Life and death in one Hand

Huwa alladhī yuḥyī wa-yumīt. He is the One who gives life and causes death.

A modern commentary stresses the word alone. He alone holds the giving of life; He alone holds the taking of it. A theological commentary links it to the previous ayah. The passage from dust to drop to infant to old age points to a powerful Lord. So, it says, does the passage from life to death and back.

The root of yumīt has a quiet, haunting picture in the lexicons. A fire whose embers have gone cold. Strength going out of a thing, until a body, a field or a heart lies still. This is established.

No human being controls either end of that. We did not choose to be lit. We cannot choose when the embers cool.

A cardiac surgeon has performed thousands of operations. A family asks him, before a difficult procedure, whether their father will live. He has every skill, every machine, every statistic. He says, quietly, that he will do everything he can, but that life is not his to give. He has learned to say it without embarrassment.

That is where the ego meets its limit. We can preserve, repair and extend. We cannot give life from nothing, and we cannot hold it when its term arrives.

A doubt can arise: is it not harsh for Allah to describe Himself as the One who causes death? Read it alongside the previous ayah. Death there was not cruelty. It was a life taken in full, at its named term. The same Hand gives and takes, and the One who takes is the One who gave in the first place.

There is a kind of peace in that. Our lives are not at the mercy of chance. They begin and end in the same Hand, which is wise and merciful in both.

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.