At-Tin · Makki · ayah 5 of 8

At-Tin 95:5

ثُمَّ رَدَدْنَـٰهُ أَسْفَلَ سَـٰفِلِينَ

“Then We return him to the lowest of the low,[1949]”

Saheeh International

Essence

The One who set you upright can turn you back down: every strength you boast of is on loan, and its use decides your end.

A reflection

The translator who lost the word for spoon

For forty years a woman translated between five languages at conferences, hospitals and courts. Words were her trade, and she was proud of never being lost for one. At eighty-six she sits at her daughter's table, holding a spoon, and cannot find the word for it in any of them.

'Then We turned him back, to the lowest of the low'. One reading of this ayah, from early authorities, takes it as the turn of old age. A classical commentator describes it with almost painful precision. The back that was straight is bent. The hair that was black turns white. The skin that was soft grows dry, and the hearing and sight that were sharp grow dull. The walk becomes a shuffle, the voice a whisper, the strength a weakness, the quick wit a confusion. Another ayah says some are returned to the most decrepit age 'so that they know nothing after having known' (16:70).

The verb is radadnāhu: We returned him. The root is a coin handed back to the one who paid it. Everything the ego counts as its own, its sharpness, its beauty, its strength, its standing, was paid out and can be handed back. Pride rests on assets it holds on loan, and this ayah shows the loan being recalled.

Why would Allah lower His finest creation? Is He diminished by our decline? He is not. One classical scholar explains that the finest form was a blessing calling for gratitude. Where it is answered with ingratitude, what follows is His justice. The decline we see in the old is not His loss. It is our lesson. It shows that nothing we have is ours, so we will take hold of the One thing that does not decline.

The translator still knows how to say Allah's name. In the end, that may be the word that matters.

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.