At-Tariq · Makki · ayah 11 of 17

At-Tariq 86:11

وَٱلسَّمَآءِ ذَاتِ ٱلرَّجْعِ

“By the sky which sends back[1903]”

Saheeh International

Essence

A second oath, by a sky that keeps coming back with rain, as if every shower were a rehearsal of your own return.

A reflection

You cannot order rain

An early scholar explained this sky simply. It returns the servants' provision every year. Were it not for that, they would perish, and their livestock with them.

City life hides this. Food comes from a supermarket, water from a tap, and the weather is something on an app. The ego finds it easy to believe that we produce our own lives.

Picture a wheat farmer with four hundred acres, checking the forecast eleven times a day in a dry May. He owns the land, the seed and a combine worth more than his house. He has studied soil chemistry and drainage. He does not own one cloud. Every morning he walks out and looks at the same sky his great-grandfather looked at, with the same question.

You have never ordered a single shower. No one has. The Arabs, whose lives hung on the rains, knew it in their bones. We have only become better at forgetting it. Another commentary calls the sky and the earth of these two oaths great blessings. Every good of this world depends on what comes down and what comes up.

Is it arrogant for God to swear by His provision, as if He wanted our thanks? Sulaymān answered that when a throne was set before him in the blink of an eye. Whoever is grateful is grateful for his own good, he said, and whoever is ungrateful, my Lord is free of need and generous (27:40). Thanks does not feed Allah. It feeds the one who gives it: if you are grateful, He says, I will surely give you more (14:7).

Pride finds it hard to survive a drought. Gratitude finds it easy to grow in the rain. The oath asks you to learn in the rain what the farmer learns in the drought.

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.