Al-Waqi'ah · Makki · ayah 82 of 96

Al-Waqi'ah 56:82

وَتَجْعَلُونَ رِزْقَكُمْ أَنَّكُمْ تُكَذِّبُونَ

“And make [the thanks for] your provision that you deny [the Provider]?”

Saheeh International

Essence

The oath seven ayat back was sworn by the positions of the stars, and here are the people who credited their rain to them.

A reflection

Every item signed for on the day

A quartermaster's issue book has one line per item per day, and a signature beside each. Nothing leaves the store unsigned. The point of the book is not suspicion. It is that the store has an owner, and the issuing is an act rather than a flow.

The word for provision in this ayah is built on exactly that.

The lexicons start it at a gift given at its set time, and then any gift, and above all the gift of Allah. They give two pictures. A soldier's ration handed out on its day. And a bird dropping food into the mouth of its chick.

Both are issues, not flows. Somebody hands the thing over, at an hour, to a named recipient.

And one commentary states what that implies with no softening at all. Allah made your provision in the sky, and you make it in the rain-stars.

That sentence is where pride quietly dies, because the arrogance in question is so ordinary. Nobody in this ayah is claiming to be God. They are claiming to know how the system works, and the claim is almost correct, and the almost is the whole of it.

We do the same with better vocabulary. The market recovered. The weather turned. The results came through. Every one of those sentences has a flow in it where an issue should be.

And the correction is small and specific. It is not a theology. It is adding a name to a sentence you were going to say anyway.

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.