Al-Ma'arij · Makki · ayah 3 of 44

Al-Ma'arij 70:3

مِّنَ ٱللَّهِ ذِى ٱلْمَعَارِجِ

“[It is] from Allāh, owner of the ways of ascent.”

Saheeh International

Essence

This punishment comes from the One who owns every stairway upward there has ever been, visible or unseen.

A reflection

The silver staircase, and the One who owns the real one

Elsewhere the Quran pictures a disbeliever's dream house: if people were not all going to chase the same prize, Allah would have given every disbeliever a home with silver ceilings and silver staircases to climb (43:33). A literal staircase, built to be noticed, the kind a guest comments on walking in.

Now read this ayah beside it. Allah names Himself here dhū al-maʿārij, Owner of the Ways of Ascent, the stairways, the ranks, the climbing-places, plural, vast enough that classical commentators read it as the very heavens, named this way because the angels rise through them. One mansion's silver staircase, however much it cost to install, is a toy set down next to that. A man spends a fortune on a feature wall and a sweeping entrance so that climbing his own stairs photographs well, and Allah owns the real architecture of ascent, the one every rank, every height, every elevated thing in creation borrows its existence from.

A fair question sits right here: why would Allah announce ownership of something so grand? Isn't that exactly the kind of self-importance a modest person would never display? The answer the Quran gives elsewhere is that He is al-Ghanī, utterly free of need (35:15); this name adds nothing to Him and costs the reader nothing to say. What it does instead is quietly recalibrate the reader's own sense of scale. Someone who has actually stood at real height, properly high up with the ground dropping away, does not come home and boast about the step stool in the kitchen. The ego's whole economy of staircases, promotions, followers, a nicer car than the neighbour's, survives only for as long as nobody in the room has seen the real thing. This ayah puts the real thing in the room.

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.