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A Good Word Like a Good Tree

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A Good Word Like a Good Tree

Hizb 26 closes Ar-Rad by contrasting those who honor their commitments and maintain family ties and patience with those who break covenants and spread corruption, promising the first group the lasting reward of Paradise and the second the harm of their own conduct, and it closes affirming that the Quran is truth sent down from the Lord regardless of how disbelievers respond to it.

The hizb then carries the whole of Ibrahim, a short sura opening with the purpose of revelation, to bring people out of darkness into light, and recalling how Moses reminded his own people of the favors shown them. Its best known image is the parable of a good word as a good tree, firmly rooted with its branches in the sky, bearing fruit at every season by its Lord's leave, set against a corrupt word as an uprooted tree with no stability at all.

Ibrahim carries Abraham's own prayer for the safety of Mecca and for his descendants to keep up prayer there, and closes with a warning about the Day of Judgment, when faces will be turned about in the Fire and those who followed will blame those they had followed, a stark image the sura leaves as its final word.

The tree parable in particular is often taught on its own, separated from the rest of Ar-Rad and Ibrahim entirely, which means many people who can recite it fluently have never located it within this hizb or within the thirty-juz scheme at all.

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