Al-Ma'idah · Madani · ayah 115 of 120

Al-Ma'idah 5:115

قَالَ ٱللَّهُ إِنِّى مُنَزِّلُهَا عَلَيْكُمْ ۖ فَمَن يَكْفُرْ بَعْدُ مِنكُمْ فَإِنِّىٓ أُعَذِّبُهُۥ عَذَابًا لَّآ أُعَذِّبُهُۥٓ أَحَدًا مِّنَ ٱلْعَـٰلَمِينَ

“Allāh said, "Indeed, I will send it down to you, but whoever disbelieves afterwards from among you - then indeed will I punish him with a punishment by which I have not punished anyone among the worlds."”

Saheeh International

Essence

Allah grants the Table in a few words, and attaches the passage's heaviest warning to whoever disbelieves after it.

A reflection

If only I had seen

In a study circle, a young man says what many quietly think. If I had been there with the Prophet ﷺ, watching his miracles with my own eyes, I would never have doubted again. Faith would be easy.

That is the assumption this ayah takes apart. We imagine a miracle as a shortcut, the thing that would settle faith for good. The disciples had asked for exactly that. Allah's answer gives them the miracle, and the cost of it in the same breath.

I am sending it down to you. Then, without a pause: so whoever of you disbelieves after that, I will punish him. It will be a punishment I do not give to anyone in the worlds.

The sign does not make faith easier. It makes unfaith heavier. Before the Table, a disciple who wavered had wavered with less in front of him. After it, any wavering would be against something he had asked for, watched descend and eaten from.

The Quran says this about signs more than once. Nothing prevented Us from sending the signs except that the former peoples denied them; and We send the signs only as a warning (17:59). It records people swearing their strongest oaths that if a sign came they would believe (6:109). And it says that even if angels came down and the dead spoke to them, most would still not believe (6:111).

The man in the study circle is not wrong to long for nearness to the Prophet ﷺ. But the people who stood nearest still had to choose, every day, with what they had seen. Some of those who saw the most turned away.

Signs are not a substitute for a willing heart. They are a weight placed on it.

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.