Al-An'am · Makki · ayah 13 of 165

Al-An'am 6:13

۞ وَلَهُۥ مَا سَكَنَ فِى ٱلَّيْلِ وَٱلنَّهَارِ ۚ وَهُوَ ٱلسَّمِيعُ ٱلْعَلِيمُ

“And to Him belongs that which reposes by night and by day, and He is the Hearing, the Knowing.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Every hour of every night and day, and everything that rests in it, belongs to Him, and the One who owns it all is listening.

A reflection

Two weeks in August, sold as if they were land

A glossy brochure arrives through the door. Own two weeks in August, it says, every year, for life. The photographs show a pool and a balcony. Read the small print and something odd appears. The buyer gets a flat for a fortnight. Nobody, anywhere, is selling August itself.

The ayah before this one asked who owns whatever is in the heavens and the earth (6:12). That was space. This ayah turns to time: His is whatever dwells in the night and the day. One classical reading of the pair is simple and striking. There is no place beyond the heavens and the earth. There is no time beyond the night and the day. Between the two ayat, every where and every when has been claimed.

The word order adds weight. 'His' comes first in the Arabic, before the thing owned. One major commentary notes that this placing restricts it: to Him, and to no one else.

Notice how freely we talk as if we owned time. My weekend. My evenings. I have no time for that. We spend it, save it, kill it and give it away. Pride lives comfortably in that language. It assumes the hours are ours to dispose of, and owed to us.

Yet no one has ever stored an hour. No one has bought back a Tuesday. We hold a fortnight at most, and the calendar was never ours to sell.

Does He need us to admit this? The ayah answers in its own last words. Having claimed every place and every moment, it does not end with a demand. It ends: He is the Hearing, the Knowing. A proud owner says 'mine' and turns away. This Owner says 'mine' and then listens. The humble lose nothing by admitting whose their hours are. They simply learn to hand them back, one at a time, to the One who was attending all along.

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.