Az-Zukhruf · Makki · ayah 12 of 89

Az-Zukhruf 43:12

وَٱلَّذِى خَلَقَ ٱلْأَزْوَٰجَ كُلَّهَا وَجَعَلَ لَكُم مِّنَ ٱلْفُلْكِ وَٱلْأَنْعَـٰمِ مَا تَرْكَبُونَ

“And who created the species, all of them, and has made for you of ships and animals those which you mount”

Saheeh International

Essence

Every kind was made in pairs by the One who is no pair, and He set the boats and beasts beneath you.

A reflection

Two needs one; One needs nothing

Khalaqa al-azwāja kullahā: He created the pairs, all of them. An early report explains the pairs as kinds and varieties: sweet and sour, white and black, male and female. One classical commentator takes it further. Everything other than Allah is a pair of some sort: above and below, right and left, past and future, summer and winter. And whatever is a pair, he argues, is created. Its Maker must be single.

He then offers a reflection drawn from arithmetic. The smallest pair is two, and two only exists once there are two ones. So a pair needs the one, while the one has no need of the pair. A pair can be split down the middle. What is single cannot be divided. Being paired, he concludes, is the root of need; being single is the root of independence.

That is a strange mirror for the ego. We are divisible creatures. We are split by competing loyalties, half-present in every room. Picture a father at his son's school play, one eye on the stage and the other on the work phone glowing in his lap. He laughs a second late at every joke. He is in two places and fully in neither.

Human beings are pairs and halves, always needing, always divided. Pride pretends otherwise: that we are whole, sufficient, undivided. The ayah quietly removes the pretence.

Someone may ask: why would Allah draw attention to His own singleness? Does it not set Him above us to make us small? It sets Him above us because He is above us. And it is a relief. The One you turn to is not split, not distracted, not half-attending. When you call, all of Him that hears, hears.

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.