Al-An'am · Makki · ayah 103 of 165

Al-An'am 6:103

لَّا تُدْرِكُهُ ٱلْأَبْصَـٰرُ وَهُوَ يُدْرِكُ ٱلْأَبْصَـٰرَ ۖ وَهُوَ ٱللَّطِيفُ ٱلْخَبِيرُ

“Vision perceives Him not,[332] but He perceives [all] vision; and He is the Subtle,[333] the Aware.[334]”

Saheeh International

Essence

No eye catches up with Him, yet He has reached every eye: too great to take in, too subtle to feel, fully aware.

A reflection

Staring into the optician's light

At the optician's, you are told to look straight into a small, bright light. You see nothing else: no face, no hand, only glare. Meanwhile, from behind that light, the optician is looking through your pupil to the back of your eye. You cannot see him at all. He can see the very nerve you see with.

The ayah is built on that reversal. 'Vision does not reach Him, and He reaches all vision'. Our eyes feel like instruments of mastery. We inspect, we watch, we film, we judge by what we have seen with our own eyes. This ayah turns the instrument round. The eyes are not the inspectors here. They are the inspected.

The ego likes to be the one holding the light. It wants God to stand still in front of it and be examined. So the ego that says 'I will believe what I can see' has the instrument backwards. The One it wants to inspect is already looking through it.

Someone may ask why God tells us this. Is it to make us feel small? He gains nothing from our smallness. But a God who could be fitted into our field of view would be a God we could manage. The ayah protects us from that shrinking. It also comforts. The One you cannot see has never once lost sight of you.

Another commentator draws out the beauty of the pairing. By His greatness He is above being reached by the eyes. By His subtlety and awareness He reaches them. He is great in His gentleness, gentle in His greatness, high in His nearness, near in His height.

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.