Al-A'la · Makki · ayah 5 of 19

Al-A'la 87:5

فَجَعَلَهُۥ غُثَآءً أَحْوَىٰ

“And [then] makes it black stubble.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The green that feeds the flock becomes dark debris for the flood to carry off, so hold your green seasons as loans.

A reflection

The face nobody at the checkout knows

For twenty years, she was the face of the evening news. Strangers greeted her in shops as if she were a cousin. Two years after she retires, a young assistant at a supermarket checkout scans her shopping. He asks if she has a loyalty card, and does not look up.

Fa-jaʿalahu ghuthāʾan aḥwā: then He made it dark, withered debris. Ghuthāʾ is what a flash flood carries down a valley: dry leaves, broken stalks and foam, mixed with filth. The water dumps it in a heap at the side and moves on. The Arabs used the word for anything swept along and not counted. One commentary adds that they used it for a crowd thrown together from many tribes, with nothing holding it together.

Aḥwā is a colour. It can mean green so deep it looks black, or greenery blackened with age. Some classical grammarians read the ayah as: He brought the pasture out deep and dark with green, then made it debris. Most commentators read: He made it into debris gone dark. One of them lists why dead grass darkens. The cold dries it, the mud of the flood clings to it, and the wind drives dust into it.

Another commentary notices something in the first reading. It is as if the pasture turns to debris before its freshness is even complete. That is how green seasons feel from the inside. They end sooner than we expected, and we were not consulted.

This is where the ego is corrected. We treat our peak as our identity: the job title, the looks, the following, the voice everyone once recognised. The ayah does not call these evil. It calls them pasture, brought out and then turned by the same Hand, without asking us.

Why would Allah point to His power to wither what He grew? Not to impress anyone; He is free of all need (35:15). The One who needs to hear it is the proud self, which quietly believes its season will last.

The one who knows her green is on loan does not trample anyone while she has it. And she does not collapse when it goes, because she never mistook it for herself. The newsreader at the checkout smiles, says no, she does not have a card, and finds that she does not mind.

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.