Qaf · Makki · ayah 5 of 45

Qaf 50:5

بَلْ كَذَّبُوا۟ بِٱلْحَقِّ لَمَّا جَآءَهُمْ فَهُمْ فِىٓ أَمْرٍ مَّرِيجٍ

“But they denied the truth when it came to them, so they are in a confused condition.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Refusing the truth on arrival, they could settle on no story about it: their affair turned like a ring on a wasted finger.

A reflection

A ring turning on a thinning finger

The word chosen for their state is marīj. The lexicons give its root a small, exact picture. A ring is said to maraja on the finger when it has worked loose and turns whenever the hand moves. One classical commentator names the cause: the finger has grown thin. An arrowhead loose in its shaft is called marīj too. The image is established: a thing that has lost its fit and will not sit still.

Picture an elderly woman in the last year of her life. Her wedding ring, which once needed soap to come off, now spins freely. When she reaches for her tea, it slides round until the stone faces her palm. Her daughter notices and goes quiet. Nothing is wrong with the ring. The finger beneath it has wasted.

That is the ayah's diagnosis. The deniers' affair was not simply wrong. It was loose. It turned this way and that and never settled, because what it should have rested on had been refused.

Another commentator notes a figure of speech. The ayah calls the affair restless, when it is really the people who are restless. Their unsettledness has soaked into everything they touch.

The early commentators gave a range of glosses: mixed, confused, uncertain, objectionable, astray. One of them explains why these all meet. A thing confused is unclear. What is unclear goes unrecognised. And what cannot be recognised is error, because guidance is clear and carries no confusion.

The image leaves a question for any heart. Does my faith fit, or does it spin? When life jolts my hand, does what I believe hold its place, or slide round to face the wrong way? A ring is only as steady as the finger it sits on.

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.