Al-Balad · Makki · ayah 14 of 20

Al-Balad 90:14

أَوْ إِطْعَـٰمٌ فِى يَوْمٍ ذِى مَسْغَبَةٍ

“Or feeding on a day of severe hunger”

Saheeh International

Essence

Feeding people is good on any day; the steep road is feeding them on the day when food is scarce and you are hungry too.

A reflection

A day that is itself hungry

Snow cuts a hill village off for four days. By the third morning the shop's shelves are nearly bare. An old man queues for the last loaves. When he reaches the front, he buys one, and turns round. He breaks it in half and hands one half to the young family behind him.

The ayah does not simply say 'feeding'. It says feeding 'on a day possessed of hunger': yawmin dhī masghabah. The grammarians compare it to the Arab way of speaking of a 'sleeping night' or a 'fasting day'. The day itself is hungry.

Saghab is hunger, and one early lexicographer adds a detail: hunger together with weariness. It is the traveller who has walked far and found nothing to eat. Another commentator takes the word more widely: a general hunger, a famine. One early scholar explained it as a day when food is dear and hard to come by. Another said: a day when people are greedy for food.

Put those together and the picture is sharp. Everyone is hungry. Everyone is tired. Every hand is reaching for the same bread. That is the day the ayah names.

One commentator draws out why it matters. Giving in times of drought and necessity weighs more heavily on the soul, he says, and earns a greater reward. He links it to two other ayat. Those who give wealth 'despite their love for it' (2:177). And those who 'feed food, despite their love for it, to the poor, the orphan and the captive' (76:8).

Anyone can be generous with a full cupboard. The steep road begins where generosity costs something you also need.

The old man in the snow did not give from surplus. He had half a loaf left for himself. But in giving away the other half, he climbed further than a rich man handing out cakes on a festival day.

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.