Al-An'am · Makki · ayah 94 of 165

Al-An'am 6:94

وَلَقَدْ جِئْتُمُونَا فُرَٰدَىٰ كَمَا خَلَقْنَـٰكُمْ أَوَّلَ مَرَّةٍ وَتَرَكْتُم مَّا خَوَّلْنَـٰكُمْ وَرَآءَ ظُهُورِكُمْ ۖ وَمَا نَرَىٰ مَعَكُمْ شُفَعَآءَكُمُ ٱلَّذِينَ زَعَمْتُمْ أَنَّهُمْ فِيكُمْ شُرَكَـٰٓؤُا۟ ۚ لَقَد تَّقَطَّعَ بَيْنَكُمْ وَضَلَّ عَنكُم مَّا كُنتُمْ تَزْعُمُونَ

“[It will be said to them], "And you have certainly come to Us alone [i.e., individually] as We created you the first time, and you have left whatever We bestowed upon you behind you. And We do not see with you your 'intercessors' which you claimed that they were among you associates [of Allāh]. It has [all] been severed between you,[328] and lost from you is what you used to claim."”

Saheeh International

Essence

Everyone arrives alone, as they first arrived, with every gift left behind and every imagined helper gone.

A reflection

The keys handed back

Outside a smart hotel, a young valet takes the keys to a silver sports car. For two minutes it is his. He feels the engine answer his foot as he eases it round to the car park. Then he walks back, hangs the keys on the board, and waits for the next guest. He never once thinks the car is his.

The ayah uses a word that turns all our possessions into that car park. Mā khawwalnākum: what We bestowed on you. The root pictures a herdsman. A khāʾil is one who tends a flock, returning to it again and again. When Allah khawwala someone, He handed them something to look after. One view says every gift came to be called this, as if a flock were handed over.

The commentators gloss it as wealth, servants, children and every comfort people once boasted about. One early commentator says the phrase is a rebuke for that boasting. Now all of it lies 'behind your backs'.

Here the ego shrinks to its real size. The house we call ours, the title on the door, the skill people praise: all handed over to tend. The arrogant man forgets the board where the keys hang. The humble one never forgets it, even while he drives.

Someone may ask why God keeps saying 'We gave you', 'We created you'. Is He insisting on the credit? He is free of all need, and we are the ones in need (35:15). The reminder adds nothing to Him. It protects us from the one mistake that turns gifts into a weight: believing they were ever ours.

The valet hands back the keys without grief, because he never claimed them. The ayah invites us to hold everything that way now, so the handing back later is not a tearing.

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.