Al-Hadid · Madani · ayah 23 of 29

Al-Hadid 57:23

لِّكَيْلَا تَأْسَوْا۟ عَلَىٰ مَا فَاتَكُمْ وَلَا تَفْرَحُوا۟ بِمَآ ءَاتَىٰكُمْ ۗ وَٱللَّهُ لَا يُحِبُّ كُلَّ مُخْتَالٍ فَخُورٍ

“In order that you not despair over what has eluded you and not exult [in pride] over what He has given you. And Allāh does not like everyone self-deluded and boastful -”

Saheeh International

Essence

Knowing that all is written steadies the heart: loss need not crush you, gain need not inflate you, and swagger has no place.

A reflection

The Prophet wept, and so may you

At a funeral, a young widow is crying quietly. An older relative leans over and whispers: 'Don't cry, it was qadar. Crying shows you don't accept it.' The widow stops, ashamed, and swallows her grief for months.

Many people read this ayah that way. Do not grieve over what passed you by. Do not rejoice in what came to you. It sounds like a call to feel nothing.

The early readers rejected that reading firmly. Ibn ʿAbbas is reported, in narrations collected by several commentators, to have said: there is no one who does not grieve and rejoice. But whoever is struck by a calamity should turn it into patience. Whoever is given good should turn it into gratitude.

Two commentators define exactly what the ayah forbids. It is the grief that drives a person out of patience and surrender to Allah. It is the joy that makes a person reckless and forgetful of gratitude. Some grief no human being is free of, and it can be joined with acceptance. Gladness at Allah's blessing can be joined with thanks. There is no harm in either.

Another adds that the joy the ayah warns against is joy of arrogance, not joy of gratitude for a blessing. The ayah's own ending makes the point. It names the mukhtāl fakhūr, the swaggering boaster. The forbidden joy is the kind that ends in swagger.

And the Prophet ﷺ himself wept. Sahih al-Bukhari records that when his infant son Ibrahim was dying, his eyes overflowed. Asked about it, he said: it is mercy. Then he said: the eye weeps and the heart grieves, but we say only what pleases our Lord.

The widow needed that hadith, not the whisper. Her tears were not a failure of faith. What the ayah protects her from is despair, the grief that swallows trust. Weep, and say only what pleases your Lord. That is the whole of it.

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.