Al-Waqi'ah · Makki · ayah 36 of 96

Al-Waqi'ah 56:36

فَجَعَلْنَـٰهُنَّ أَبْكَارًا

“And made them virgins,”

Saheeh International

Essence

The word here belongs to the family of dawn, early rain and first fruit, and the whole ayah turns on who can assign a state.

A reflection

Bringing into being, then assigning a state

An enameller's kiln reaches around eight hundred degrees. Ground glass is laid in a copper cell, the piece goes in, and a few minutes later the powder is not powder. It is a smooth, glassy field of colour fused to metal. The enameller did not invent that temperature or that chemistry. He put a thing where a change could happen to it.

The previous ayah said they were brought into being. This one says something else and should not be read as a repetition. The verb here is jaʿala, and the lexicons describe it as the widest making word in Arabic: wider than doing, wider than crafting. It covers placing a thing, turning one thing into another, appointing, and declaring. A wage made over to you for a task is a juʿl. The Quran's plainest use of it is people in a storm putting their fingers in their ears (2:19).

So the two ayat together describe two different powers. One brings a thing out of nothing. The other assigns what that thing shall be.

Measure yourself against the second one, which is the humbler and the more exposing. You cannot assign yourself a state. You can perform confidence and not be confident. You can perform patience through a week and know exactly how little of it is real. You can be told you are forgiven and still not feel clean. Every quality you want, you can only approach from the outside, by habit and pretence, hoping the inside follows.

He does not approach from the outside. He says what a thing is, and it is that.

There is nothing for pride to stand on here, and nothing to be afraid of either. The One who can simply declare a state is the One you ask to change yours.

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.