Al-An'am · Makki · ayah 67 of 165

Al-An'am 6:67

لِّكُلِّ نَبَإٍ مُّسْتَقَرٌّ ۚ وَسَوْفَ تَعْلَمُونَ

“For every news [i.e., happening] is a finality;[315] and you are going to know.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Every weighty report from Allah has its fixed place and time of landing, and those who deny it will come to know.

A reflection

The flood from rain you never saw

A village sits on a river in a dry valley. One summer morning the sky is perfectly clear. Yet by noon the river is brown and rising, and the low fields are under water. Nobody in the village saw a cloud. The rain fell two days earlier, on hills beyond the horizon.

The first hearers had a word for that flood. A sayl nābiʾ was a flood that came down from another country, from rain no one there had seen. The root of nabaʾ, the word for 'report' in this ayah, pictures exactly that. A nābiʾ was a stranger who turned up from another land. The nabʾa was a faint sound caught by a hunter's ear, from far away. The lexicons give this picture plainly, so it is established. News is nabaʾ because it arrives from beyond your sight.

And not every report earns the word. One lexicon of near-synonyms says a report is called nabaʾ only when it is weighty. It must yield knowledge or strong likelihood, and be free of falsehood. Many hear 'news' and think of gossip or headlines. The Quranic word is heavier: a report of great consequence, from beyond.

Now read the ayah with that picture. For every report there is a fixed place of landing. The warnings in the ayat before, of punishment from above and below, are such reports. They come from beyond the hearers' sight, from the unseen. The Makkans looked up and saw a clear sky. The ayah tells them that the rain has already fallen somewhere they cannot see.

That is a sobering thought for any of us. The consequences of what we do are often gathering out of sight. A clear sky today proves nothing about the river tomorrow. And the same is true of good: a kindness done in secret may already be on its way back.

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.