Az-Zalzalah · Madani · ayah 7 of 8

Az-Zalzalah 99:7

فَمَن يَعْمَلْ مِثْقَالَ ذَرَّةٍ خَيْرًا يَرَهُۥ

“So whoever does an atom's weight[1965] of good will see it,”

Saheeh International

Essence

No good is too small to be seen: the weight of a floating speck, done by you, will be shown to you on that Day.

A reflection

The weight of a speck in a sunbeam

A chemistry teacher places a sheet of paper on the laboratory balance and asks the class to read the display. Then she takes a pencil, writes her name on the paper, and puts it back. The last digit has changed. The class goes quiet. A signature in pencil has weight. It was always there; they simply never had an instrument fine enough to show it.

The ayah speaks in exactly that register. Mithqāl is a set weight, the measure a thing registers on a scale. Dharra is the tiniest thing the first hearers could picture. The lexicons give two established images: the smallest young ant, barely visible as it crosses the sand, and the speck of dust you see floating in a beam of sunlight through a doorway. One report from Ibn ʿAbbās adds a third picture, as one view: press your palm on the ground, lift it, blow on it, and each grain of dust that flies off is a dharra.

So the ayah weighs the weightless. It takes the smallest thing the eye can catch and says: that much good, done by you, will be seen.

The Prophet ﷺ was once asked about donkeys, whether there was any teaching about them as there was about horses. Sahih al-Bukhari records his answer. Nothing had been revealed to him about them except 'this unique, all-gathering ayah', and he recited this ayah and the one after it. He called it jāmiʿa, gathering everything in, and fādhdha, standing alone of its kind. It needs no list of examples because it covers every example. The Companion Ibn Masʿūd is reported to have called it the most decisive ayah in the Quran.

The verb at the end is yarahu: 'he will see it'. The sources say this means seeing its reward, or seeing the deed itself laid out in the record. Either way, nothing has slipped below the scale.

The pencil mark was there before the balance showed it. Every small good you have done is already there too. The Day simply brings the instrument that is fine enough to show it.

The full entry has 4 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.