Al-Mulk · Makki · ayah 2 of 30

Al-Mulk 67:2

ٱلَّذِى خَلَقَ ٱلْمَوْتَ وَٱلْحَيَوٰةَ لِيَبْلُوَكُمْ أَيُّكُمْ أَحْسَنُ عَمَلًا ۚ وَهُوَ ٱلْعَزِيزُ ٱلْغَفُورُ

“[He] who created death and life to test you [as to] which of you is best in deed - and He is the Exalted in Might, the Forgiving -”

Saheeh International

Essence

Death was made on purpose, placed before life in the sentence, and the examination it opens is marked on quality and not on volume.

A reflection

Nobody has ever manufactured either one

Watch a glassblower and you are watching a man work inside a window he did not set. The gather on the end of the pipe is workable only while it glows. He has perhaps forty seconds. He can turn it, blow it, open it, flare the lip. He cannot decide when it stiffens. The whole craft is obedience to a moment that belongs to the heat.

We say we are building a life. Look at what we actually do with it. We decorate, arrange, flare the lip. The two facts that matter, that it is warm at all and that it will set, were handed to us.

The ayah states them as two deliberate acts. He created death and life. Not permitted them, not observed them. Created them. The commentaries notice how much work the verb is doing over the first of the pair, and a long argument runs through them about it. One group read death as simply the absence of life. Others answered that an absence cannot be created, so death must be something made. The commentators divided on it, and the detail belongs where they left it. What neither side could do was call death an accident.

The commentaries preserve a report that Allah humbled the children of Adam by death. This world was made a house of living and then of dying. The Hereafter was made a house of recompense and then of staying. Nothing here rests on that report. But it names something honestly. Every ego has a version of itself that does not die, and death is what refuses the claim.

And then the ayah closes on two names together. He is the Mighty, the Forgiving. A man with power who is crossed has to answer, or he looks weak, and that anxiety is what pride actually is. Might that can forgive without losing anything is a different kind of might altogether.

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.