Al-Mutaffifin · Makki · ayah 14 of 36

Al-Mutaffifin 83:14

كَلَّا ۖ بَلْ ۜ رَانَ عَلَىٰ قُلُوبِهِم مَّا كَانُوا۟ يَكْسِبُونَ

“No! Rather, the stain has covered their hearts of that which they were earning.[1880]”

Saheeh International

Essence

The problem was never the verses; it was a mirror so rusted by the day's small earnings that it could no longer show anything true.

A reflection

The rusted mirror

Rayn is rust spreading over a polished sword or a mirror, and any covering laid slowly over a thing. It is also what overcomes you. The Arabs said wine rānat over a drinker's mind until he could not come to himself. Drowsiness rāna over the eyes.

One picture from the Companions' own speech fits this surah exactly. ʿUmar spoke of a man who borrowed carelessly, content to be praised as the first to arrive for the pilgrimage. By morning, ʿUmar said, he was rīna bihi: sunk under debts he could not climb out of. The lexicons use the same verb for a man who falls into something he cannot escape.

So all the pictures meet in the heart. A mirror dulled by rust. A mind overcome by drink. A man buried in debt. Each happened slowly, and each ended with someone unable to see or act clearly.

That is why the verses sounded like 'tales of the ancients' (83:13). One commentator says the rust became like tarnish on a mirror, standing between them and recognising the truth. The fault was not in what was recited. It was in the surface it fell on.

Picture a bicycle left out in the garden over one wet winter. In the autumn it worked perfectly. Nobody decided to ruin it. Each rainy night added a little. By spring the chain is a single orange bar that will not turn, and the owner says the bike is 'broken'. It is not broken. It is rusted.

The ayah says the same of the heart. It was not born blind. It was left out in the rain of its own small earnings, night after night, until it would not turn.

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.