Al-Jathiyah · Makki · ayah 5 of 37

Al-Jathiyah 45:5

وَٱخْتِلَـٰفِ ٱلَّيْلِ وَٱلنَّهَارِ وَمَآ أَنزَلَ ٱللَّهُ مِنَ ٱلسَّمَآءِ مِن رِّزْقٍ فَأَحْيَا بِهِ ٱلْأَرْضَ بَعْدَ مَوْتِهَا وَتَصْرِيفِ ٱلرِّيَـٰحِ ءَايَـٰتٌ لِّقَوْمٍ يَعْقِلُونَ

“And [in] the alternation of night and day and [in] what Allāh sends down from the sky of provision [i.e., rain] and gives life thereby to the earth after its lifelessness and [in His] directing of the winds are signs for a people who reason.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Night and day, rain and wind: the signs that never stop recurring are given to the people whose reason holds them back from ruin.

A reflection

The wind that will not take instructions

Taṣrīf means turning: turning a thing one way and then another. The commentaries spell out what that looks like for the wind. North one day, south the next; east, then west. Off the sea, then off the land. By night, by day. One classical commentator lists their work. Some winds bring rain, some carry pollen, some are nourishment for the soul. Some are barren and bring nothing. An early authority, quoted in another commentary, puts it more starkly. If He wills, He makes the wind a mercy. If He wills, He makes it a punishment.

Picture a man who has fitted a smart weather station to his roof. It has an anemometer, a rain gauge and an app that sends alerts to his phone. He likes to say he is never caught out by the weather. One November night a gust tears the anemometer clean off its bracket and drops it in next door's pond. In the morning the app reports, with perfect confidence, a wind speed of zero.

We can measure the wind. We cannot direct it. Every sailor, farmer and pilot knows this, and every one of them plans around a force that answers to someone else. The ego hates that. It prefers to believe that with enough data, enough money and enough planning, nothing is outside our control. The wind is the daily, invisible reminder that the most powerful things around us do not take instructions from us.

The ayah does not say the winds blow. It says they are turned. There is a Turner. The commentaries name Him: it is Allah who turns them, for your benefit.

Does He need us to admire this? No. The signs are 'for a people who reason'. They are there to bring us back to the truth about our size, which is the beginning of rest. The man with the weather station did not need a better app. He needed to say, once, in shāʾ Allāh, and mean it.

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.