An-Naba · Makki · ayah 26 of 40

An-Naba 78:26

جَزَآءً وِفَاقًا

“An appropriate recompense.[1824]”

Saheeh International

Essence

The recompense fits the deed the way a notch fits the bowstring: exactly, neither more nor less than what was earned.

A reflection

The last piece of the puzzle

A grandfather and his granddaughter have spent three weeks on a thousand-piece jigsaw. On the last evening there is one gap left, and one piece in her hand. She turns it, lowers it, and it drops into place with a tiny click. It could not have gone anywhere else.

The root of wifāq holds that click. The lexicons say it means two things fitting each other. An archer awfaqa his arrow when he set its notch on the bowstring. A poor man's milch camel was 'the wafq of his family' when its milk exactly met their need, with nothing left over. Someone came 'at the wafq of the new moon', arriving just as it appeared. These are established senses.

The word beside it has its own picture. The root of jazāʾ means one thing standing in the place of another and matching it. To jazā a debt was to pay it off. In Madinah the debt collector was the one who came to settle accounts. So jazāʾ is a return that fully answers the deed.

The sources explain the ayah with one voice. The recompense matched their deeds. It was according to their works, fitting their evil actions. One commentator adds that it is measured to their deeds in severity and lightness, by what they deserved, as His justice and wisdom require. An early scholar sums it up: they did evil and were repaid with evil; had they done good, they would have been repaid with good.

This matters because the ayat before it are hard to read. Boiling water, foul discharge, ages upon ages. The next word steadies the reader. None of it is random, and none of it is excess. Every piece fits a gap that was cut by the person's own deeds.

That is sobering, and also just. Each of us is cutting the shape of our own gap every day.

The full entry has 4 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.