Ar-Rahman · Madani · ayah 6 of 78

Ar-Rahman 55:6

وَٱلنَّجْمُ وَٱلشَّجَرُ يَسْجُدَانِ

“And the stars and trees prostrate.[1593]”

Saheeh International

Essence

The word for star means what rises, and the verb beside it means to bow: from star to weed, everything that rises lowers itself.

A reflection

What rises, bows

A homeowner pays to have a two-hundred-year-old oak cut down. It shaded his new patio. The tree had outlived every owner the house had ever had. It came down in an afternoon, and the patio got its sun.

We tend to treat the natural world as furniture: there for our use, removable when inconvenient. This ayah reverses the relationship. The star and the tree prostrate. They are not décor in our house. They are worshippers in His.

The commentaries take the pairing in two ways, and both humble us. If najm is a star, then the brightest things in the night sky bow together with the trees of the earth. If it is the low plant that creeps along the ground without a stem, as one major commentary prefers, then everything in between is covered. What stands on a trunk bows, and what never rises above the soil. Nothing in creation is too high or too low to be bowing.

And the root of najm means rising: a star coming over the horizon, a tooth breaking through, a shoot pushing out of the earth. The ayah sets a word for rising beside a verb for lowering. What rises, bows.

That is human pride seen plainly. Everything else that rises knows to bow. Only one creature climbs and then refuses. To Him bow all in the heavens and the earth, the Quran says elsewhere. Sun, moon, stars, mountains, trees, beasts, and many of mankind (22:18). Many, not all.

A sceptic may ask whether a God who receives bowing is vain. But the ayah does not describe bowing as something He gains. It describes what things do when they are what they were made to be. Arrogance does not diminish Him at all. It leaves the creature out of step with everything else.

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.