Ar-Rahman · Madani · ayah 24 of 78
Ar-Rahman 55:24
وَلَهُ ٱلْجَوَارِ ٱلْمُنشَـَٔاتُ فِى ٱلْبَحْرِ كَٱلْأَعْلَـٰمِ
“And to Him belong the ships [with sails] elevated in the sea like mountains.”
Saheeh International
Essence
Human hands built the ships, yet the ayah calls them His: runners on the sea, sails raised like mountains coming up over the horizon.
A reflection
His, though you built it
A container ship comes into port with its owner's name painted along the hull in letters three storeys high. The company built the ship, financed it, crewed it and insured it. Nobody on the quay doubts whose ship it is.
This ayah begins with a word that overrules the paint. Wa lahu: and His are the ships. One commentary asks the obvious question. Everything in the heavens and the earth is His; why single out the ships? Its answer is that at sea, nobody really owns a ship. Out on the water, everyone aboard is waiting on the mercy of Allah, knowing that their goods and their lives are in His grip. Then they come ashore to houses of stone and mortar, and forget.
Another commentary adds the precise point. Being the ones who built the ships does not take them out of His ownership. The whole of the ships' benefit comes from Him.
That is a direct challenge to one of the deepest prides in human history: pride in what we have built. The bridge, the tower, the fleet, the company. Every one of them stands on materials we did not create. It relies on laws of buoyancy and wind we did not write, and a sea we cannot command.
A sceptic might hear in 'His are the ships' a claim on other people's labour. But nothing is taken from the shipwright. His work is real, and it is honoured. It is simply placed inside a larger ownership, the way a tenant's improvements stand on a landlord's ground.
He gains nothing by the claim (35:15). We gain humility at the very moment we feel most like makers.
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