Al-Waqi'ah · Makki · ayah 75 of 96

Al-Waqi'ah 56:75

۞ فَلَآ أُقْسِمُ بِمَوَٰقِعِ ٱلنُّجُومِ

“Then I swear by the setting of the stars,[1618]”

Saheeh International

Essence

The oath is sworn by the places where the stars come down, and the word for those places is the word for where rain falls.

A reflection

Whose word settles the matter

In a saleroom the hammer is the only sound that settles anything. Everything before it is opinion, however loudly held. The hammer is not louder than the bidding. It is simply the one noise in the room that has authority attached.

An oath works like that in human speech, and this ayah is the one place in the argument where Allah uses one.

There is an old objection, and one commentary meets it head on. Someone held that Allah does not swear by anything of His creation, and that this is only a way of opening speech. The commentary calls that weak. What most hold, it says, is that this is an oath from Allah. He swears by whatever He wills of His creation, and that is itself evidence of His greatness. Set a man's pride beside that and it has nowhere to stand.

Read that last clause again, because it is the point that shrinks a man.

When you and I swear, we borrow. We put our hand on something we did not make and ask it to carry our credibility, because we have not enough of our own. The weight comes from the thing sworn by.

He swears by what He owns. Nothing is borrowed in the sentence. The stars do not lend Him anything; mentioning them is already a statement of what belongs to Him.

And that is why the oath reads as greatness rather than as insistence. Insistence is what a man does when his word is not enough. This is the opposite move: a demonstration of reach, made in the grammar of a promise.

There is a small check available for anyone who swears a lot. Count how often you say I swear, or honestly, or believe me. Each one is a hand reaching for something outside you to prop up a sentence that would not stand on its own. The habit is not a sin. It is a reading on a gauge.

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.