Al-An'am · Makki · ayah 115 of 165

Al-An'am 6:115

وَتَمَّتْ كَلِمَتُ رَبِّكَ صِدْقًا وَعَدْلًا ۚ لَّا مُبَدِّلَ لِكَلِمَـٰتِهِۦ ۚ وَهُوَ ٱلسَّمِيعُ ٱلْعَلِيمُ

“And the word of your Lord has been fulfilled in truth and in justice. None can alter His words, and He is the Hearing, the Knowing.”

Saheeh International

Essence

His word is complete, true in what it tells, just in what it asks, beyond change, and spoken by the One who hears and knows.

A reflection

Nothing to patch on the first morning

A new phone comes out of its box, gleaming. Before it will let you do anything, it asks for an update. The product is not an hour old and already needs mending. Nobody is surprised. Everything human beings finish, they finish provisionally.

Against that, the ayah opens with wa-tammat kalimatu rabbika: the word of your Lord is complete. One lexicon defines completeness as reaching the point where a thing needs nothing outside itself. The root's old pictures fit. The full moon was called badr tamām. A weaver short of wool for his cloak went looking for the last tuft, the tamma, to finish it. This Book has no missing tuft.

One commentator records a line of Arabic verse at this point. When a thing is complete, its decline appears, so expect loss when people say it is done. That is the law of everything we make: a peak, then a slope. So, he observes, the ayah adds at once that none can change His words. It is a guard. His completeness is not the kind that tips into decay.

This is where the ego shrinks. Our best work needs revising. Our firmest opinions of ten years ago embarrass us now. Our rules are amended, our theories replaced, our promises renegotiated. Even our language drifts until our grandchildren need footnotes. Nothing we say stays finished.

Why would He announce His own perfection? Not because He needs the praise; He is free of every need. The announcement is for the person caught in the dispute of the previous ayah, asked to choose a judge. You cannot rest your weight on something still being patched. He tells you it is complete so that you can lean on it.

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.