Al-Waqi'ah · Makki · ayah 60 of 96

Al-Waqi'ah 56:60

نَحْنُ قَدَّرْنَا بَيْنَكُمُ ٱلْمَوْتَ وَمَا نَحْنُ بِمَسْبُوقِينَ

“We have decreed death among you, and We are not to be outdone”

Saheeh International

Essence

Two racing words in one ayah: a measure exact as a hoof in its own print, and a stake nobody takes ahead of Him.

A reflection

Two words from the racecourse

A farrier can tell you about a horse that tracks true. Its hind hoof lands exactly in the print its forefoot has just left, stride after stride. The animal leaves a single line of prints instead of two. The Arabs had a word for it. They called such a horse aqdar, as if each pace were measured.

That is the first word of this ayah. One lexicon gives the root as the full measure of a thing: its amount, its extent, where it ends. It uses that horse to explain it, and records a poet's instruction: measure with your own forearm, meaning know your own size. From this everyday measuring comes qadar, and from the same root comes qudra, power, which is the ability to bring about the measure you intend.

Then the second half of the ayah reaches for the other half of the racecourse. One lexicon says the root of masbūq lived in the horse race. Riders were sent off together to see whose horse came in first, and the winner took the sabaq, the stake laid down between them. A horse that kept winning was sabūq. From there the word spread: a man with a sābiqa had been first to a cause.

So one short ayah holds both pictures. Every death falls exactly where it was measured to fall, like a hoof in its own print. And nobody takes the stake ahead of Him.

Sit with how much of a life is spent on precedence. Being first, being ahead, being the one they mention. That is where pride lives, and all of it is racing vocabulary. The ayah uses the same vocabulary to say the race was never open. Arrogance is a rider who thinks he set the course.

Someone may ask why He states this at all. He is free of all need (35:15), and whoever strives, strives only for himself (29:6). A man announces that he cannot be beaten because he fears being beaten. Allah is describing the course.

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.