Al-Mutaffifin · Makki · ayah 5 of 36

Al-Mutaffifin 83:5

لِيَوْمٍ عَظِيمٍ

“For a tremendous Day -”

Saheeh International

Essence

We call a match, a launch or a sale the biggest day of the year; the One who made the galaxies calls one Day great.

A reflection

The only day called great

ʿAẓīm grows from ʿaẓm, bone. The Arabs named bone for its hardness. One classical account says the verb first meant 'his bone grew large', and was then borrowed for every kind of greatness. The ʿaẓīm of a people was the one above whom there was no one. So greatness in this word is not swelling or show. It is frame, weight and rank: the hard thing that holds everything else up.

Now think of the days we call big. Sports commentators announce the biggest match of the season roughly every other week. Shops hang countdown clocks for a sale that returns next year. A company calls its new phone historic. Each of these is loud. Almost none of them has bone in it. By next month nobody remembers.

Then notice who is speaking here. One classical reader makes the point simply. A thing that Allah Himself calls great must be great beyond any measure we have. When the Creator of every sky uses the word, our scale of 'big' collapses.

The commentaries fill in some of what the word holds. It is great in its terror, in its length and in what happens in it. People are raised, the hidden is brought out and every account is settled.

So this short ayah quietly resizes a calendar. The truly big day is still ahead. Everything else is either preparation for it or distraction from it. The weddings, results and launches are not worthless. They are simply not the frame. A life built as if they were is a body without a skeleton.

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.