Ad-Dukhan · Makki · ayah 8 of 59

Ad-Dukhan 44:8

لَآ إِلَـٰهَ إِلَّا هُوَ يُحْىِۦ وَيُمِيتُ ۖ رَبُّكُمْ وَرَبُّ ءَابَآئِكُمُ ٱلْأَوَّلِينَ

“There is no deity except Him; He gives life and causes death. [He is] your Lord and the Lord of your first forefathers.”

Saheeh International

Essence

There is no god but He, who gives life and gives death, your Lord and the Lord of the forefathers you appeal to.

A reflection

Two doors on one corridor

Picture a hospital chaplain at the start of a night shift. At ten o'clock his pager sends him to the maternity ward, where a couple want a prayer said over their newborn daughter. At ten past eleven it sends him to the end-of-life room on the floor above, where an old man is breathing his last. Same hour, same building, two doors on one corridor.

In neither room is he in charge of what is happening. Nobody is. The doctors, the midwives, the machines, all of them serve something they did not start and cannot stop.

The ayah names who does: yuḥyī wa-yumītu, He gives life and He gives death. One short commentary adds the sharp edge. There is no giver of life and no giver of death other than Him. Another explains the purpose of the line. He is the Creator of the world, so nothing that cannot create a single thing may be set beside Him.

That is humbling in the most practical way. Human pride grows on the illusion of control: over a career, over health, over the people we think depend on us. Arrogance quietly assumes that tomorrow is guaranteed. The two verbs here dissolve that assumption. The first breath and the last were never in our hands.

Some feel this as a threat. But the order is worth noticing. Life comes first in the sentence. The One who gives death is first the One who gave life. He gave it freely, to someone who had not asked for it and could not earn it.

The humble response is gratitude for the first verb, and readiness for the second. Every morning a person wakes is a small fresh instance of yuḥyī. It is a gift, not an entitlement. Waking and saying 'praise be to Allah who gave us life' is simply reading this ayah back to its Author.

The full entry has 4 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.