Al-Layl · Makki · ayah 3 of 21

Al-Layl 92:3

وَمَا خَلَقَ ٱلذَّكَرَ وَٱلْأُنثَىٰٓ

“And [by] He who created the male and female,”

Saheeh International

Essence

The oaths come down from the sky to the self: by the One who made male and female before you could choose anything.

A reflection

The cake was already pink

At a gender-reveal party in a garden, a couple stand behind a cake with a knife. Their friends count down from three. The knife goes in, the sponge inside is pink, and everyone cheers as if a decision had been made in that moment. It had been made months before, without anyone in the garden.

After the night and the day, the oaths come closer. Wa mā khalaqa al-dhakara wa-l-unthā. The commentators read the small word mā in two ways. It may mean 'and the One who created male and female', so that Allah swears by Himself. Or it may mean 'and His creating of male and female'. One classical reading joins them. It is an oath by the One so great in power that from a single water He made both male and female. The people of Makkah, one early report notes, used mā this way of Allah. When thunder rolled, they said: glory to the One whom you glorify.

Notice what this does to the ego. The first fact about you that anyone ever wanted to know was settled without you. So were your face, your voice and the date you arrived. We spend much of life building an identity we can call our own. Yet its foundation was laid by Another, before we could ask for anything.

Isn't it vain, someone might ask, for God to swear by Himself? Among people, an oath borrows weight from something greater than the speaker. That is why we swear by God. But there is nothing greater than Allah to borrow from. 'And who is truer in speech than Allah?' (4:87). When He swears by Himself, He is not boasting. He is simply naming the highest thing there is, which happens to be Him. The cheering in the garden was not wrong. It was only addressed to the wrong people.

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.