An-Najm · Makki · ayah 41 of 62

An-Najm 53:41

ثُمَّ يُجْزَىٰهُ ٱلْجَزَآءَ ٱلْأَوْفَىٰ

“Then he will be recompensed for it with the fullest recompense -”

Saheeh International

Essence

Whatever you strove for will not merely be repaid; it will be repaid with the fullest repayment there is, by the One who never shortchanges anyone.

A reflection

The one who fulfilled, repaid most fully

Listen to the passage as a whole and a word comes back. Four ayat ago it praised Ibrahim alladhī waffā, 'who fulfilled'. Now it ends the sayings of the ancient scrolls with al-jazāʾa al-awfā, 'the fullest recompense'. Waffā and awfā come from the same root.

The lexicons trace that root to completeness. A silver coin was wāfin when it had its full weight, nothing shaved off. A measure was wāfin when nothing was missing. To istawfā a debt was to collect it in full.

So the passage moves from human fulfilling to divine fulfilling. Ibrahim paid in full what was asked of him: every command, every test. And the passage closes by promising that every striver will be paid, not merely in full, but in the fullest way: awfā, the comparative form, 'more complete'.

And set against both stands the man of 53:34, who 'gave a little and then hit rock'. He short-paid. He began a bargain and did not finish it. The passage holds the three side by side. The human who stopped. The human who fulfilled. And the Lord who repays more fully than either.

This is a reflection on the shape of the passage, not a reading the commentaries spell out. But the shared root is in the text for anyone to hear.

There is a lesson in its structure. We are asked to be wafī, people who fulfil. We are not asked to be perfect. But we are asked not to stop at the rock, and to pay in full what we owe to Allah and to people.

And we are promised that the One we are dealing with is the most fulfilling of all. Nobody who fulfilled for His sake has ever been short-changed. The coin He pays back is heavier than the one we handed over.

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.