Al-Mulk · Makki · ayah 30 of 30

Al-Mulk 67:30

قُلْ أَرَءَيْتُمْ إِنْ أَصْبَحَ مَآؤُكُمْ غَوْرًا فَمَن يَأْتِيكُم بِمَآءٍ مَّعِينٍۭ

“Say, "Have you considered: if your water was to become sunken [into the earth], then who could bring you flowing water?"”

Saheeh International

Essence

A surah that opened on the dominion of everything closes with a question about whether you could get a drink of water.

A reflection

Below the reach of picks and arms

A well-sinker will tell you that there is a depth below which you are no longer digging for water. You are asking for it. Above that line, effort works: another day's labour, a better pick, a stronger man on the windlass. Below it, labour is irrelevant, and everybody in the trade knows it.

One commentary puts the line in exactly those terms. The water has gone down into the earth, it says, so that it cannot be reached by sharp picks or strong forearms. Another says simply that the buckets no longer reach it. A third glosses the word as sunk away so completely that you cannot get to it at all.

The word itself is one of the plainest in the Quran. One lexicon makes the root going down and settling low. The bottom of anything is named from it. Water does this when it goes into the earth and the well is dry. An eye does it when it sinks back into the head, and the sun does it when it goes down. The low country towards Yemen carries the name, set against the high ground. A man of deep judgement is described as far down.

So the condition in this question is not scarcity. Scarcity can be worked. This is water that has gone below the level at which work is a category.

And that is the quiet end of every human claim to be self-made. A person can honestly say that he built the house, chose the trade, raised the children, kept the accounts straight. In the course of all of it he drank a great deal of something he had no part in making and could not have replaced. Pride survives on the length of the list of things we did. It has never once included the list of things that simply arrived, which is longer, and which includes the condition for reading this sentence.

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.