Az-Zukhruf · Makki · ayah 5 of 89

Az-Zukhruf 43:5

أَفَنَضْرِبُ عَنكُمُ ٱلذِّكْرَ صَفْحًا أَن كُنتُمْ قَوْمًا مُّسْرِفِينَ

“Then should We turn the message away, disregarding you, because you are a transgressing people?”

Saheeh International

Essence

You may turn your back on the Reminder, but it does not turn its back on you; your excess does not stop Allah speaking.

A reflection

Not driven off like a stray camel

The question in this ayah is built from two vivid pictures, and the first hearers would have seen both.

The first is in the verb. Naḍribu ʿan, to strike away from. Two classical commentaries hear in it a scene from the desert wells. When strange camels pushed in among a tribe's own herd at the trough, the herders drove them off. The Arabs said: he struck the strangers away from the trough. Shall We drive the Reminder away from you, the ayah asks, like an unwanted animal at the water?

One of them adds something lovely. The image implies the opposite of what is denied. Wisdom requires the Reminder to keep coming towards them, as if it were pressing in upon them, crowding in at their water. It is not the stranger to be driven off. It is the one that keeps arriving.

The second picture is in ṣafḥan. The ṣafḥa is the broad flat side of a thing: of a sword, of a stone, of the face or the neck. To turn away from someone was to show them the side of your neck. The lexicons give this plainly, and the image is established.

Put together, the question runs like this. Shall We turn aside from you, and drive the Reminder from your trough, because you have gone too far? The expected answer is no.

The tenderness of it is easy to miss. People who mock a message usually earn the cold shoulder. The Makkans had earned it many times over. Instead, the Reminder keeps coming to their water, unbidden, like an animal that will not be shooed.

If you have ever felt you had pushed Allah's words too far away to come back, this ayah answers you directly. The Reminder was never the one that left.

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.