Al-Waqi'ah · Makki · ayah 96 of 96

Al-Waqi'ah 56:96

فَسَبِّحْ بِٱسْمِ رَبِّكَ ٱلْعَظِيمِ

“So exalt the name of your Lord, the Most Great.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The surah ends on the words it used twenty-two ayat earlier, so that its whole closing argument sits inside one repeated sentence.

A reflection

The ring closes on the same four words

This ayah is the last line of the surah. It is word for word the ayah that closed the four challenges, twenty-two ayat earlier.

So the whole of the closing argument sits inside one sentence said twice.

And it is worth listing what sits inside the frame. The great oath. The Book described as noble, in a guarded place, touched only by the purified. The charge of going soft. The accusation about the rain. A man with his soul at his throat and his family looking on. Somebody nearer to him than they are. A challenge nobody can meet. And three men at a threshold, each given what was prepared.

All of it, between two identical lines.

A repeated line at both ends of a passage tells you that everything between them is one movement rather than a sequence of topics. The seed and the deathbed are the same argument.

And the name the surah chooses to close on is the one that leaves pride with nothing. The lexicons begin the root at bone: the hard frame of the body, named for its strength. From bone comes bigness, then greatness of standing, then gravity, a matter that weighs.

So the Arabic for great is skeletal. Not a thing that looks large. The thing that holds the rest up.

Human greatness is almost entirely cladding. A surah that has just described a man unable to breathe among his own relatives has made that unarguable. Everything he had was cladding. The frame was never his.

And one commentary adds the observation that makes this the right name for the last word. This name points towards nearness, since what is vast is near to everything and fills the places.

So the surah closes on greatness, and the greatness it names is the near kind.

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.