Al-Ghashiyah · Makki · ayah 7 of 26

Al-Ghashiyah 88:7

لَّا يُسْمِنُ وَلَا يُغْنِى مِن جُوعٍ

“Which neither nourishes nor avails against hunger.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Food should build the body and end its hunger; this food does neither, and much of what feeds our hearts is its cousin.

A reflection

Food has two jobs

Food has two jobs. It takes away hunger, and it builds the body up. The classical commentators name exactly these two when they explain this ayah. The food of the people of the Fire, they say, has both benefits removed. It neither fattens nor fills.

Yusmin comes from a root the Arabs used for plumpness, the opposite of leanness. A poet described riding his camel so hard that he wore away her fat, until the ridges of her spine stood out. Samn, ghee, is named from the same fat. To the desert mind, fat was strength stored on the bone for the hard months.

One commentator notices the order of the two denials. Had the ayah denied relief from hunger first, the other denial would have been unnecessary. Food that cannot fill you can hardly build you. So it names both, one after the other, and nothing is left. He adds that jūʿ comes without the article, to make it small. Not even the slightest hunger is eased.

Picture a student in exam term living on packets of instant noodles. Two minutes in the kettle, gone in five. Full for an hour, hungry again by ten. After six weeks he is tired all day and cannot think why. The food did the first job badly and never did the second at all.

Much of what we feed the heart is like those noodles. Gossip fills an evening and leaves you smaller. Outrage fills an hour and builds nothing. Envy is a meal that makes you hungrier. None of it relieves the hunger, and none of it strengthens.

This ayah shows that kind of food in its final, stripped-down form. It invites a quiet audit now. Of the things I take in each day, which fill me, which build me, and which do neither?

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.