Ash-Shuraa · Makki · ayah 30 of 53

Ash-Shuraa 42:30

وَمَآ أَصَـٰبَكُم مِّن مُّصِيبَةٍ فَبِمَا كَسَبَتْ أَيْدِيكُمْ وَيَعْفُوا۟ عَن كَثِيرٍ

“And whatever strikes you of disaster - it is for what your hands have earned; but He pardons much.”

Saheeh International

Essence

What strikes you is a fraction of what your hands earned, and the far larger part He has quietly wiped away.

A reflection

The fine you remember, the pardon you never saw

A builder has had one bad review in fifteen years. He quotes it at every family dinner, word for word. He never mentions the three jobs he knows he rushed, where nobody noticed the corners he cut.

That is how human pride keeps accounts. Every penalty is recorded, with a sense of injustice. Every escape goes unrecorded, as if it were simply our due.

The ayah reverses the ledger. Wa-mā aṣābakum min muṣībatin fa-bi-mā kasabat aydīkum: whatever affliction strikes you is for what your hands have earned. Then comes the second half, which pride never reads: wa-yaʿfū ʿan kathīr. And He pardons much.

The root of ʿafw has an established image. It is the desert wind passing over an abandoned camp until not a track is left. A wrong is not just hidden. It is wiped away. The commentators explain kathīr, much, as much of the sins. He does not punish for them at all.

Early believers put the proportion vividly. A Companion bearing a long illness told his visitors that what they saw was for what his hands had earned. What his Lord had pardoned, he said, was more. The ayah itself states the proportion. What He pardons is kathīr.

A sceptic might hear this and see an offended ruler guarding his honour. But a vain ruler punishes every slight. This ayah describes the opposite. The sins harm Him nothing, and most are simply wiped away.

The builder's one review is real. So are the three rushed jobs. Humility begins when we read both columns. The afflictions that reach us are a narrow strip. Beside them lies a wide, silent field of things that were never held against us at all.

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.