Al-An'am · Makki · ayah 101 of 165

Al-An'am 6:101

بَدِيعُ ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٰتِ وَٱلْأَرْضِ ۖ أَنَّىٰ يَكُونُ لَهُۥ وَلَدٌ وَلَمْ تَكُن لَّهُۥ صَـٰحِبَةٌ ۖ وَخَلَقَ كُلَّ شَىْءٍ ۖ وَهُوَ بِكُلِّ شَىْءٍ عَلِيمٌ

“[He is] Originator of the heavens and the earth. How could He have a son when He does not have a companion [i.e., wife] and He created all things? And He is, of all things, Knowing.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The One who began the heavens and the earth with no model has no consort, needs no heir, made everything, and knows everything.

A reflection

A well where no one had dug

A songwriter releases a melody she believes is entirely her own. Within a week, listeners have found its cousins. A bass line from an old soul record, a turn of phrase from a folk song, a chord pattern used a thousand times. She is not a thief. She is simply human. Everything we call new is rearranged from what we were given.

The ayah opens with a title no human can share: Badīʿ al-samāwāti wa-al-arḍ. The commentators gloss it as the One who originated the heavens and the earth with no earlier model to copy. One lexicon, quoted by a later commentator, adds: without tool, without material, without time and without place.

The root carries an image from the desert. The Arabs said a man ibtadaʿa a well when he dug where no one had ever dug. Such a well was badīʿ: water from ground that had never given water. A rope spun from fresh fibre was badīʿ too. It had not been unpicked from an old rope and twisted again.

Every human craft is an old rope twisted again. The engineer uses laws he did not set. The poet uses a language he did not invent. Even our imagination runs on images we absorbed from a world we did not make.

That is where the ego quietly shrinks. We sign our work and defend our originality. There is nothing wrong in that. But only One has ever dug where there was no ground.

Someone may ask why God praises Himself with such titles. Does He need us to admire His originality? He needs nothing at all. The title is for the reader. It sets His work so far above ours that comparing them becomes impossible. That is the first step of the ayah's argument.

The songwriter can keep writing. She simply knows, now, whose fibre she is spinning.

The full entry has 5 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.