Ar-Rahman · Madani · ayah 28 of 78

Ar-Rahman 55:28

فَبِأَىِّ ءَالَآءِ رَبِّكُمَا تُكَذِّبَانِ

“So which of the favors of your Lord would you deny?”

Saheeh International

Essence

Straight after 'everyone on it is passing away', the surah asks which favour you deny, and so places death itself inside the list of gifts.

A reflection

Whatever else is a gift, surely not this

Most people carry an assumption so deep it is rarely said aloud. Whatever else in life may be a gift, death is not. It is the loss against which every gift is measured, the line drawn under the account. So when this refrain follows "everyone on it is passing away", the claim it makes simply does not register.

But stop and hear the sequence as words. Everyone on the earth is passing away. The Face of your Lord remains. So which of the favours of your Lord will you two deny?

That is a strange sentence to put after a death notice. It asks you to count the passing away among the gifts.

The commentaries did not let it slide. Nearly all of them stop here and ask the obvious question: how is perishing a favour? Their answers differ, and together they are worth more than any one.

One says the favour is equality. In death, it observes, the feet of everyone stand level. Another adds that death is what moves people on to the abode of reward. A third calls it the greatest favour of all: the arrival, right after it, of the time of recompense. A fourth puts it most simply. Passing away is a door into remaining, into a life without end.

One early commentary reads the refrain as pointing back at exactly what was just described. Which of these favours, it says: these ones, the ones in front of you now.

So the refrain is not there for its sound alone. It insists that the verse before it be weighed. Seven more times in the stretch ahead it will follow a warning: a reckoning, a fire, a splitting sky. Each time it will make the same claim, and each time the claim will need thinking through.

Here is the first and hardest one. The end of everything you know is being handed to you, and it is called a favour.

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.