Ash-Shuraa · Makki · ayah 17 of 53

Ash-Shuraa 42:17

ٱللَّهُ ٱلَّذِىٓ أَنزَلَ ٱلْكِتَـٰبَ بِٱلْحَقِّ وَٱلْمِيزَانَ ۗ وَمَا يُدْرِيكَ لَعَلَّ ٱلسَّاعَةَ قَرِيبٌ

“It is Allāh who has sent down the Book in truth and [also] the balance [i.e., justice]. And what will make you perceive? Perhaps the Hour is near.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Allah sent down the Book and the Balance together, and no one knows how near the Hour is when everything will be weighed.

A reflection

The thermometer that read five degrees low

"It is Allah who sent down the Book with the truth, and the Balance." The commentaries explain the Balance, al-mīzān, mostly as justice. One says justice is called a balance because a balance is the instrument of fairness and evenness. Others add more. It is what the Books set out for a person to act on. Or the actual scales by which goods are weighed, which people were taught to use so they would not cheat one another.

Every reading agrees on one thing. The measure comes from Him. It is sent down, not invented.

The ego dislikes this. It wants to be its own measure. We judge others by standards we set, and ourselves by more generous ones. We feel sure our sense of fairness is accurate.

Picture a woman who makes jam every autumn. One year, batch after batch refuses to set. She follows the recipe exactly, watches the thermometer, and takes the pan off at the right number. Finally she puts the thermometer into a pan of plain boiling water. It reads five degrees low. It has been wrong for years, and she never knew, because she was checking it against itself.

A scale cannot calibrate itself. It needs a fixed standard from outside. Human conscience is real and precious, but left to itself it drifts, usually in our own favour. That is why the Balance is sent down alongside the Book.

Some ask why God, rather than human reason, should set the measure of right. Does He need to control our moral lives? He needs nothing. The measure is for us, the way boiling water is for the thermometer. Without an outside standard, every one of us reads a few degrees low on our own faults.

So bring your judgements to the Book. Test your sense of fairness against what was sent down. It will often be humbling. It will also, at last, make things set.

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.