Ghafir · Makki · ayah 9 of 85

Ghafir 40:9

وَقِهِمُ ٱلسَّيِّـَٔاتِ ۚ وَمَن تَقِ ٱلسَّيِّـَٔاتِ يَوْمَئِذٍ فَقَدْ رَحِمْتَهُۥ ۚ وَذَٰلِكَ هُوَ ٱلْفَوْزُ ٱلْعَظِيمُ

“And protect them from the evil consequences [of their deeds]. And he whom You protect from evil consequences that Day - You will have given him mercy. And that is the great attainment."”

Saheeh International

Essence

The angels end their prayer by defining triumph: to be shielded from every evil on that Day is already to have received His mercy.

A reflection

Shield them from the deed, and from what it brings

Wa-qihimu al-sayyiʾāt: and shield them from the evils. What evils?

The commentaries give more than one answer, and the answers fit together. One early scholar said: the punishments. They are called evils because they are evil in themselves. Others said: the bad consequences of their misdeeds. A third reading takes the word in its usual sense, the misdeeds themselves: keep them from committing them at all.

One commentary joins these into a single request. Protection from evil deeds is of two kinds, it says. Protection from doing them, by being granted the help to avoid them. And protection from their consequence, by being forgiven. The angels' words ask for both.

The same commentary adds a sobering observation about consequences. They do not always arrive at once. Sometimes they come with the deed. Sometimes they come later, as an illness follows its cause after a delay. A person commits a wrong, sees no effect, and thinks nothing happened. Meanwhile it is working on him gradually, the way a poison works.

Think of a carbon monoxide leak. There is no smell. Nobody coughs. The family sleeps, wakes with headaches, blames the weather. The harm is real long before anyone feels it.

That is why the second kind of protection matters so much. Most of us only fear the evils we can feel. The angels ask for protection from all of them, including those already quietly at work.

The root of sayyiʾa is ugliness: a face you would turn away from. A deed is called sayyiʾa because, seen clearly, it is something the soul recoils from. The prayer asks that we see it clearly, and be kept from it.

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.