An-Naba · Makki · ayah 7 of 40

An-Naba 78:7

وَٱلْجِبَالَ أَوْتَادًا

“And the mountains as stakes?[1822]”

Saheeh International

Essence

The mountains are pegs knocked into the ground so that the bed you live on does not sway; your steadiness was lent to you.

A reflection

Pegs you did not drive

A father pitches the family tent on the first evening of a camping holiday. He makes a show of it: poles snapped together, canvas thrown over, a speech about how it will stand up to anything. His ten-year-old daughter quietly goes round the edge with the mallet, knocking each peg in at an angle. At two in the morning the wind gets up. The tent holds. What holds it is not the speech.

The mountains, says the ayah, are awtād: pegs. The sources explain the picture plainly. Allah fixed the earth with mountains as a house is fixed with its pegs, so that it would not sway with the people on it. One commentator adds that this completes the earth's being a bed, the image of the previous ayah. A bed that rocked would be no bed at all.

Here the ego has something to learn. We like to think of ourselves as steady people. We call a man who will not be shifted 'a mountain', and we are flattered when someone says it of us. But every hour of calm we have ever spent on this earth has rested on pegs we did not drive. We did not raise a single mountain. We did not choose where to set them, or how deep.

Pride is the father's speech: taking credit for a stillness that someone else's hammer provided. Humility is noticing the pegs.

A doubt may press in here. Why does the Quran keep pointing at Allah's works, as if He wants to be admired? The Quran itself answers that He is free of need, and that we are the needy ones. The sources read this whole list as evidence and as kindness. The One who pegged down a world can surely bring people back. And a person who sees the pegs stops pretending to be one.

Tonight, when you lie down in a room that does not move, remember the mallet. The steadiness you rest in was given, not earned.

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.