Ar-Rahman · Madani · ayah 38 of 78

Ar-Rahman 55:38

فَبِأَىِّ ءَالَآءِ رَبِّكُمَا تُكَذِّبَانِ

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

Saheeh International

Essence

After the sky splits, the refrain asks which of His powers you deny: the power to split it, and the power holding it up.

A reflection

Here the favours are His power to do what He said

Most readers carry one meaning for ālāʾ through all thirty-one refrains: blessings, nice things, gifts to be grateful for. That is the word's ordinary sense, and in many places it is right.

But at this refrain, straight after the sky splitting, one great early commentary does something unusual. It glosses the word differently. Which of the power of your Lord will you deny, it reads, O company of jinn and humankind? His power to do what He has told you He will do.

That small shift changes the whole question.

The ayah before described something no human has seen and most people quietly doubt: the sky split open, turning rose-red, melting like oil. The natural response of a modern mind is not to deny a gift. It is to doubt a capacity. Could that really happen? Is the sky the kind of thing that splits?

The refrain, read this way, goes straight to that doubt. The denial in view is not ingratitude. It is underestimating the Speaker. Treating His words about the end as poetry because the event seems too large.

Think how often that happens with smaller things. A person reads that Allah forgives all sins, and quietly thinks: not mine. Reads that He gives provision, and thinks: not in this economy. Reads that He will raise the dead, and thinks: that is a metaphor. In each case the favour is not rejected. The power behind it is doubted.

The surah's answer is to put the whole of creation in front of you first. The sun and moon on their courses, the two seas, the ships like mountains, the Face that remains. The One who did all that is the One saying the sky will split.

Which of His powers will you deny? Perhaps the one you have been treating, without admitting it, as a figure of speech.

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.