Al-Waqi'ah · Makki · ayah 57 of 96

Al-Waqi'ah 56:57

نَحْنُ خَلَقْنَـٰكُمْ فَلَوْلَا تُصَدِّقُونَ

“We have created you, so why do you not believe?”

Saheeh International

Essence

The verb for creating is a word about measuring before cutting, and the question that follows it is put in the present tense on purpose.

A reflection

Measured before anything was cut

In a shipyard's mould loft the floor is the drawing. Before any steel is cut, the lines of the hull are laid out full size, frame by frame. Chalk and thin battens, on a floor the length of the ship. Every plate in the vessel is taken off that floor. Nothing is cut until the whole thing exists as measurement.

That is the Arabic verb in this ayah, and English loses it entirely.

Picture a leatherworker with a hide spread before him, say the lexicons. Before a single cut, he measures it: this much for a water-skin, this much for a boot. That measuring is khalq, the first meaning of the root. They preserve an old line of praise that turns on it: you cut what you have measured, while others measure and never cut.

From measuring comes making. When Allah creates, the lexicons add, it is origination with no model before it, always to the measure wisdom requires.

Now put yourself on that floor. You were measured before you were cut, by a mind that needed no previous hull to copy. Your height, your temperament, the particular combination of gifts and gaps you have spent your life negotiating with. All of it was drawn full size before any of it existed.

The ego has no footing here, and the old line of praise shows exactly why. We are the ones who measure and never cut. Plans, intentions, the person we meant to become. Measurement without making is the ordinary condition of a human being.

Someone may ask why He states His own making at all. He is free of all need (35:15), and tells us plainly that whoever strives, strives only for himself (29:6). A man who recites his achievements is asking for something. Allah is establishing a premise, and the next clause shows why He needed it.

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.