Ash-Shuraa · Makki · ayah 4 of 53

Ash-Shuraa 42:4

لَهُۥ مَا فِى ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٰتِ وَمَا فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ ۖ وَهُوَ ٱلْعَلِىُّ ٱلْعَظِيمُ

“To Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is in the earth, and He is the Most High, the Most Great.[1406]”

Saheeh International

Essence

Everything in the heavens and the earth is His alone, and He is above it all, so nothing you hold is yours for keeps.

A reflection

Initials in the bark

The ayah opens with lahu, "to Him", placed before anything else. In Arabic, putting it first narrows the claim. To Him, and to no one else, belongs what is in the heavens and what is in the earth. The concise commentaries spell it out: to Allah alone, as creation, as ownership and as management.

One commentary puts it bluntly. All of it is His servants and His property, under His power and His direction. Not the stars only, not the oceans only. Your house, your savings, your body and the hours of your day are inside that "what".

The ego does not like this sentence. It is built on the word "mine". My car, my career, my opinion, my space. We guard these things, compare them, and feel diminished when someone else's are bigger. Much of our anxiety is simply the effort of defending what we think we own.

Picture a beech tree at the edge of a park. In the summer of 1970, two teenagers carved their initials into its trunk with a penknife, inside a heart. It felt permanent. They meant it to be. Fifty years later the tree is still there. The letters have stretched and blurred as the bark grew, and nobody walking past can read them. The teenagers are grandparents in different cities. The tree has outlived the claim.

Everything you hold is a little like that. Your name is carved on it for a while, and then the bark grows over.

A reader might ask why Allah needs to state His ownership at all. Does a God who is truly great need to remind anyone? But the statement adds nothing to Him. He owned everything before the ayah was revealed, and would if it never had been. It is said for us. It releases us from a job we were never able to do: holding on to everything for ever.

The commentaries also note that this ayah confirms the might and wisdom named just before it. The Mighty, the Wise reveals; and here is why His word carries weight. It comes from the One who owns the whole world the word is spoken into. Your humility before it is not humiliation. It is simply accuracy.

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.