Al-Ghashiyah · Makki · ayah 26 of 26

Al-Ghashiyah 88:26

ثُمَّ إِنَّ عَلَيْنَا حِسَابَهُم

“Then indeed, upon Us is their account.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The surah that opened with a question ends with an answer: their reckoning rests on Allah, not on you, a warning and a relief.

A reflection

Down to the groove of a date-stone

Some people keep accounts on everyone. A woman at her niece's wedding can still tell you, twenty years on, exactly what each guest gave at her own. A man remembers every favour he has done and which ones were never returned. Most of us run a quieter version: a private ledger of who hurt us, who owes us and who fell short.

The ayah takes that ledger out of our hands. Thumma inna ʿalaynā ḥisābahum: then, truly, upon Us is their reckoning. A modern concise commentary spells out what that excludes: on Us alone, not on you and not on anyone else. The phrasing, 'upon Us', is the language of an obligation taken on. One classical commentator explains that the reckoning is binding on Allah alone, and He holds people to account for the naqīr and the qiṭmīr. Those are the tiny groove on a date-stone and the thin film around it.

Nothing slips through an account kept at that scale. The fraud that was never discovered. The kindness nobody saw. The cruelty dressed as a joke. All of it is on the one ledger that matters.

That should humble our pride as private auditors. Our accounts are partial, biased and often wrong. His are exact. We can put ours down.

Does Allah count our deeds because He needs them? The root of ḥisāb also means sufficiency: ḥasbī, it is enough. He is the One who is enough, and He needs nothing added to Him. Another commentator gives the real reason for the reckoning. If Allah never took the right of the wronged from the one who wronged him, it would be as though He were content with injustice. And He is far above that. He counts for the sake of those who were wronged, not for His own gain.

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.