Ar-Rahman · Madani · ayah 53 of 78

Ar-Rahman 55:53

فَبِأَىِّ ءَالَآءِ رَبِّكُمَا تُكَذِّبَانِ

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

Saheeh International

Essence

After 'every fruit, in two kinds', the question asks which favour you would deny, and the easiest one to deny is the fruit never seen.

A reflection

One fruit you know, and one you have never seen

Ask most readers what 'of every fruit, two kinds' means and they will say: plenty. More fruit than anyone could want. Then the refrain arrives, and the question sounds almost rhetorical. Who would deny fruit?

But the commentaries do not read the pair as mere quantity. They read it as two different things.

One reading says each fruit comes in two sorts, one familiar and one strange. Another says fresh and dried, neither falling short of the other. A third says both kinds are sweet and both are relished. Another makes the pair a mark of rank: these higher gardens hold two kinds of every fruit, where the gardens below them hold one.

Take the first reading seriously, because it changes the question that follows.

Picture a man on his first holiday abroad. For a fortnight he orders the same omelette every morning, because it is the one dish on the menu he recognises. The waiter keeps recommending figs with something he cannot pronounce. On the last morning he tries it, and spends the flight home annoyed with himself.

He never denied the figs existed. He denied them a place at his table, because they were not the thing he already knew.

That is the denial the refrain presses on here. Not the atheist's 'there is no fruit', but the quieter refusal of any good that does not look like goods we have had before. A Companion is reported to have said that nothing of this world is in the next except the names.

So the question after this ayah is sharp. You will happily accept the fruit you know. Which of His favours will you refuse because you cannot yet picture it?

The same refusal shows up long before the next life. An answer to a prayer in a shape you did not order. Provision that arrives by an unfamiliar road. Each comes paired with what you hoped for, and the strange one is the one we leave on the plate.

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.