Ash-Sharh · Makki · ayah 8 of 8

Ash-Sharh 94:8

وَإِلَىٰ رَبِّكَ فَٱرْغَب

“And to your Lord direct [your] longing.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Your effort belongs to the task, but your longing belongs to your Lord alone.

A reflection

To your Lord, not to the stones

Most of us hear wa-ilā rabbika fa-rghab as a pious closing line: and turn to your Lord in prayer. Something devotional, for after the real business is done.

Hear it the way the commentaries say it landed. In Makka, raghba, longing and earnest asking, already had addresses. The idolaters of his people, one early commentator writes, had turned their longing for their needs to their gods and rivals. People carried their hopes to stones.

So the word order is the whole message. Wa-ilā rabbika, to your Lord, is placed before the verb. In Arabic that fronting narrows: to Him, and not to anyone else. Make your longing His alone, the early explanations say, and not any of His creation's.

There is a reflective echo in the surah's last two commands. The root of fa-nṣab, stand, also named the nuṣub: the stones set upright in Arabia, where offerings were made. The surah's final words take the standing and the longing that Makka gave to its stones, and turn both towards one Lord. That link is a reflection, not a claim about why the word was chosen. But it would hardly have been lost on ears that knew those stones.

Our stones are quieter. Picture a businessman who touches a lucky charm in his wallet before every pitch. He would laugh if you called it worship. Yet that is where his hope goes, in the moment it matters.

The ayah asks a plain question of every hope you carry: what address is written on it?

The full entry has 7 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.