Ad-Dukhan · Makki · ayah 52 of 59
Ad-Dukhan 44:52
فِى جَنَّـٰتٍ وَعُيُونٍ
“Within gardens and springs,”
Saheeh International
Essence
The secure place of the mindful is gardens and springs, the very things Pharaoh's people left behind, now given to those who never lose them.
A reflection
The gardens Pharaoh left behind
Fī jannātin wa-ʿuyūn: among gardens and springs.
Read these words and the surah's own earlier lines come back. Of Pharaoh's people, drowned in the sea: how many gardens and springs they left behind, and crops, and noble dwellings (44:25-26). The exact phrase. Jannātin wa-ʿuyūn.
And another surah uses it of Thamūd. Their prophet asked them: will you be left secure in what you have here, among gardens and springs (26:146-147)? Secure, āminīn, and gardens and springs. The very pair that this surah has just promised the mindful: a secure place, then gardens and springs.
The narration-based commentary draws the contrast with the scene just before. Gardens and springs, it says, set against what the others have: the tree of zaqqūm and the drink of scalding water.
A bank repossesses a large villa with a pool. Estate agents come to photograph it for sale. The family's pictures are still on the walls: children at birthdays, a wedding, a dog in the garden. Everything in the photographs is gone. The garden, the pool, the life. Only the walls remain to be sold.
Pharaoh's people had gardens and springs. Thamūd had them too, and felt secure in them. All of them left them behind.
The Quran makes us see the same garden twice. Once as something lost by those who thought it was theirs. Once as something given to those who never claimed it, and who will never have to leave it.
The question is not whether we will have gardens. Many people do, for a while. It is which kind of garden we are living for: the one that is left behind, or the one that is kept.
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