Al-Waqi'ah · Makki · ayah 70 of 96

Al-Waqi'ah 56:70

لَوْ نَشَآءُ جَعَلْنَـٰهُ أُجَاجًا فَلَوْلَا تَشْكُرُونَ

“If We willed, We could make it bitter, so why are you not grateful?”

Saheeh International

Essence

The word for undrinkable water comes from the roar of flame in a bellows, and the only command in the four challenges follows it.

A reflection

The alternative He did not choose

A glassmaker weighs a batch before it goes into the furnace. Sand, soda, lime, and a flux measured in small amounts. Get the flux wrong and the melt is not poor glass. It is not glass. The whole charge comes out as something nobody can use, and the furnace has to be emptied.

The ayah names that kind of failure, and then says it has not happened.

Two commentaries make the comparison explicit. He created water sweet, cool and clear. Had He willed, He would have made it salt and bitter, like the drowning seas.

This is a particular way of showing power. The ayah does not boast about what was made. It states what was not made, and lets you do the arithmetic.

There is nothing the ego can do with a sentence like that. Pride needs a comparison in which you come out well. Here the comparison is between the world you live in and a world that was equally available. You were in neither conversation.

And this is where the challenge stops being an argument and becomes an examination. Everything you drank today came out of a decision you were not consulted about, made in your favour. You have never once thought about the other option.

One commentary notes a small grammatical thing that fits exactly. Over the crop the sentence carries an emphatic particle; here it does not. One classical explanation is practical. Brackish water is the ordinary case in the world, so no emphasis was needed. Sweet water running over changed ground will turn salt by itself.

Which means the ayah is describing the exception, not the rule. The rule is salt. The exception is in your glass.

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.