An-Najm · Makki · ayah 34 of 62

An-Najm 53:34

وَأَعْطَىٰ قَلِيلًا وَأَكْدَىٰٓ

“And gave a little and [then] refrained?”

Saheeh International

Essence

He started to give, struck the first hard layer, and put down the spade: the Quran's picture of goodness that stops when it starts to cost.

A reflection

The digger who hit rock

Every Arab who heard wa-akdā saw a well. The lexicons and commentaries explain the word with one shared picture. A man digs for water. The first metres go easily, through soft ground. Then his spade rings against a kudya, a hard band of rock. He cannot break through, or will not. He stops. Ḥafara fa-akdā: he dug, and hit rock.

The commentaries record the related uses that grew from it. A digger's fingers were kadiya when they grew thick and numb from the work. Land was kādiya when its plants were slow to come up. A man akdā when his goodness grew little. And the word passed to anyone who began to give and did not finish. An old Arabic poet wrote of a man who 'gave a little, then his giving hit rock; and whoever spends kindness among people is praised'.

So the ayah paints its man in one stroke. Wa-aʿṭā qalīlan wa-akdā: 'and gave a little, and then hit rock.' The early commentators explain it as giving a little and then cutting it off; one adds, 'he obeyed a little, then stopped'.

Picture a man restoring an overgrown garden. He decides to plant an apple tree in the corner. Half a spade's depth down, he hits an old buried concrete slab. Breaking it would take a hired breaker and a weekend. So he plants the sapling shallow, right on top of it. It looks fine for a summer. By the second year it is leaning and yellow.

That is the tragedy of akdā. Not refusing to dig at all, but digging just far enough to look like effort, then stopping at the first resistance. A well that stops at the rock is not half a well. It is a hole with no water in it.

What is your rock? And what would it take to break through 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.