Al-Buruj · Makki · ayah 2 of 22

Al-Buruj 85:2

وَٱلْيَوْمِ ٱلْمَوْعُودِ

“And [by] the promised Day”

Saheeh International

Essence

The Day is not a guess but a promise, already fixed by the One who never breaks His word.

A reflection

Green shoots, and the stallion's roar

Al-yawm al-mawʿūd: the promised Day. The root means raising hope with words, and the first hearers saw promises all around them. After rain, a tribe's land was called wāʿida, promising: its first green shoots told of pasture to come. A cloud could promise rain. A morning could promise heat. A young horse could promise run after run.

The same root named a threat. Waʿīd al-faḥl was the stallion's roar just before he charged. You did not wait to see what came next.

So one word holds both the green shoot and the roar. That is exactly how this Day arrives in the surah. For the believers pushed into the trench, it is the shoot: 'that is the great triumph' (85:11). For those who sat and watched, it is the roar: 'the grip of your Lord is severe' (85:12). The Day is the same Day. What you hear in the word depends on what you have been doing.

Notice the grammar too. Mawʿūd is a passive participle: the thing already promised. The Day is not a plan still being drafted. Its date is set, even if we are not told it, by the One who made the promise. One early explanation adds whom it was promised to. The people of heaven and the people of earth were promised that they would be gathered in it.

The Arabs counted a broken promise as a kind of lie. That makes the oath sharper. Everyone listening had been let down by a promise at some point. A tribe did not come; a debt was not repaid; a rain never fell. Here is a promise from the only One who has never broken His word. You may dread it or long for it. You cannot talk it out of coming.

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.