Al-Mulk · Makki · ayah 5 of 30

Al-Mulk 67:5

وَلَقَدْ زَيَّنَّا ٱلسَّمَآءَ ٱلدُّنْيَا بِمَصَـٰبِيحَ وَجَعَلْنَـٰهَا رُجُومًا لِّلشَّيَـٰطِينِ ۖ وَأَعْتَدْنَا لَهُمْ عَذَابَ ٱلسَّعِيرِ

“And We have certainly beautified the nearest heaven with lamps [i.e., stars] and have made [from] them what is thrown at the devils[1714] and have prepared for them the punishment of the Blaze.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The ceiling of the room you are all sitting in was hung with lamps, and the same lamps guard the perimeter.

A reflection

The lamps on the ceiling of your house

A chandler supplying a great hall for one night's feast works for months. Tallow rendered, wicks drawn, moulds filled, two thousand candles counted into crates. The hall is bright for five hours. By the end, the wax is running down the sconces and the floor has to be scraped. And the bill is enormous.

One commentator makes exactly this comparison, and it is worth hearing in his own terms. People adorn their mosques and their houses with lamps, he says. So it is as though He said: We have adorned the ceiling of the house you are all gathered in with lamps. Lamps your lamps cannot stand beside for light.

That single move does something to the scale of a person. You are not looking up at the sky. You are sitting indoors, under a ceiling, and the ceiling has lights in it. The room you are in is the world.

And the word chosen for them is domestic, not cosmic. Maṣābīḥ is the plural of miṣbāḥ, an ordinary oil lamp. The sources note that stars are called lamps simply for the light they give. The word for morning comes from the same root, for the light that reaches people with the day.

Now set your own illuminations beside it. We light bridges and towers and shop fronts, and there is a quiet pride in it. Every one of them is metered. Every one needs replacing. Not one of them was lit without someone being paid.

The ceiling above you has been lit every night since before there was anyone to see it. No bill, no maintenance log, and almost no comment. Vanity grows in the gap between what we make and what we take for granted. Closing that gap is most of what humility is, and it can be done tonight by walking outside and looking at the light fittings.

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.