The Quran

ذٰلِكَ بِأَنَّ اللَّهَ هُوَ الحَقُّ وَأَنَّ ما يَدعونَ مِن دونِهِ الباطِلُ وَأَنَّ اللَّهَ هُوَ العَلِيُّ الكَبيرُ

Ali Unal

With God alone rests the knowledge of the Last Hour (when it will come). He sends down rain (just at the time and place He alone knows), and He alone knows what is in the wombs. No soul knows what it will reap tomorrow, and no soul knows in what place it will die.¹ Surely God is All-Knowing, All-Aware.

This verse explains five things of which God alone has exact knowledge. Although the time of rain can be guessed to a certain extent, it is no more than a guess that can be made after the signs of the rain have appeared and, therefore, it is not foreknowledge. The statement referring to what is in the wombs does not merely relate to the sex of the embryo in the womb, but also to its future physical traits; to its inborn capacities and character; and to the question of whether it will be born, and if it is born, what role it will play in life; etc.
As pointed out in note 3 to 3: 3, it is of great significance that the Qur’ān praises the believers first of all for their faith in the Unseen (ghayb). This means that existence is not restricted to what is sensed and observed. This corporeal realm is, according to the measures particular to it, the manifestation of the unseen and unobservable, and it is only one of the numerous realms. The truth or full reality of every phenomenon in this world lies in the world of the Unseen. So, by mentioning five things included in the Unseen in this verse, the Qur’ān draws our attention to God’s absolute, all-encompassing Knowledge vis-à-vis the restricted knowledge of humankind. Human existence is restricted in many respects. Human beings have no dominion over the operation of even their own bodies, let alone over the world as a whole. They cannot prevent themselves from getting hungry and thirsty; they have no part in determining their parents, or the time and place of their birth, nor their physique or physical structure; nor do they know when and where they will die. In addition, they have no knowledge of the future and, in most cases, cannot acquire true knowledge of the past or even of the present. But just as the creation is a whole with all its parts interrelated, time and space also comprise a whole whose parts are linked to one another. Every event in the human realm is not independent of those who do it, or of the time or the place when and where it occurs, or even of the past and the future. So how can a being who is deprived of the exact knowledge of itself, of the other members of its kind, of both time and space, with all their parts, and of its environment, with its relation to the other parts of the universe, claim to order or have authority over its life, as well the lives of others, or dare to give order to the world according to its own will? As this is the truth of the matter, it is only God Who has full knowledge of everything, of all of time and place, and of every being with all its relations to others, time and space. Thus, it is only God Who can have, and Who has, the right to order the life of all creatures.