ۖ
The Originator of the heavens and the earth; when He decrees a matter, He only says to it: Be, and it comes to be.
The preceding verse rejected the attribution of a child and declared that everything in the heavens and the earth belongs to The God. Now a single word sheds further light on the Creator’s relationship with this world:
“The Originator of the heavens and the earth.”
The Arabic description (badīʿ) conveys more than simply “creator.” Its root also carries the sense of being unprecedented and bringing forth something without a prior model. Al-Ahqaf 46:9 illuminates this aspect of its meaning:
“Say: I am not unprecedented among the messengers.”
Messengers had come before him, so he was not without precedent. Al-Hadid 57:27 also says of monasticism:
“And monasticism, which they themselves devised.”
They introduced something in a form that had not previously been prescribed for them. Within this field of meaning, “the Originator of the heavens and the earth” describes a creation that is not a repetition or reconstruction of an earlier model.
This matters especially immediately after the claim that The God has taken a child. In the experience of creatures, a child comes into an already existing chain: one generation follows another, and the new being is related to what preceded it. But The God is not Himself part of that chain. He originates the very world in which birth, generations, and reproduction occur.
Al-An‘am 6:101 makes this connection more explicit:
“The Originator of the heavens and the earth—how could He have a child when He has no consort and has created everything?”
“Originator” is therefore no incidental description in the discussion of a child. The Qur’an directs attention beyond the pattern by which creatures reproduce. The One who brought forth the heavens and the earth without a prior model is not dependent, in creating, on the same route His creatures follow in producing offspring.
Nevertheless, “Originator” should not immediately be equated with the philosophical term “creation from nothing.” The word itself conveys being unprecedented and not dependent upon a prior model. Questions about “primordial matter” or the precise metaphysical form of creation are separate. There is no need to load more into the word than it says.
The verse then moves from origination to the fulfillment of a decree:
“When He decrees a matter, He only says to it: Be, and it comes to be.”
The Arabic verb rendered “decrees” (qaḍā) has more than one use in the Qur’an: it can concern judging, determining, settling, or bringing something to completion. Here a matter has reached the point at which its realization is decreed. The verse expresses this through the shortest of commands:
“Be.”
And:
“And it comes to be.”
The Qur’an does not explain how this “saying” takes place. We need not imagine a voice like a human voice, material letters, or a bodily conversation. What the verse makes clear is that the fulfillment of His decree is not caught in the limitations of creatures. No independent obstacle stands between His will and its realization with the power to defeat His command.
Ya-Sin 36:82 expresses the same point through willing:
“His command, when He wills something, is only to say to it: Be, and it comes to be.”
After speaking of life and death, Ghafir 40:68 repeats the construction used in Al-Baqarah:
“He is the One who gives life and causes death; when He decrees a matter, He only says to it: Be, and it comes to be.”
These verses do not collapse “willing” and “decreeing” into one word. They connect both with the realization of the divine command through the same expression: “Be, and it comes to be.”
In Maryam 19:35, the connection with the preceding verse’s rejection of a child appears without an intervening verse:
“It is not for The God to take a child. Exalted is He! When He decrees a matter, He only says to it: Be, and it comes to be.”
What Al-Baqarah presents across verses 116 and 117 appears here in one continuous statement: rejection of a child, declaring The God beyond such an attribution, and then “Be, and it comes to be.”
The same reasoning is applied to Jesus. In Aal Imran 3:47, Mary asks how she could have a child when no man has touched her. The answer does not turn Jesus’s extraordinary birth into divine sonship. It directs attention to the creative power of The God:
“Thus The God creates whatever He wills. When He decrees a matter, He only says to it: Be, and it comes to be.”
Aal Imran 3:59 completes the argument through Adam:
“The likeness of Jesus with The God is as the likeness of Adam: He created him from dust, then said to him: Be, and he came to be.”
Having no father does not take a human being beyond being created. Adam, too, did not come into being through the ordinary pattern of human birth, yet the Qur’an does not use this to construct a divine genealogy. The wonder of creation does not hold attention upon the creature; it turns attention back to the Creator.
When we read “Be, and it comes to be,” we should not immediately imagine that every creature must appear before us all at once, without passing through any stages. The Qur’an itself speaks of the staged creation of the human being, development in the womb, and the growth of plants. What emerges gradually in our world can also be the fulfillment of that same command. Having stages does not mean that something beyond the power of The God has held up His will. Those very stages can be the route He has decreed for bringing that creature into being.
“Be, and it comes to be” should therefore not be understood solely as a picture of sudden appearance. The verse emphasizes that what He decrees cannot be defeated by an independent obstacle beyond His command. How that matter emerges in the material world, and over what period, is a different question that this expression alone does not settle. Neither appearing all at once nor emerging in stages is, in itself, beyond His power. If He has decreed that something should come into being through stages, passing through those stages is itself the fulfillment of His command.
The relationship between the two verses now becomes clearer. Verse 116 said that everything in the heavens and the earth belongs to Him. Verse 117 says that those very heavens and earth result from creation that does not repeat a prior model. The God neither needs a child to continue His own existence nor has to enter into His creatures’ mechanisms of birth and reproduction to create something new.
He is the Originator of the heavens and the earth; when He decrees a matter, He says: Be, and it comes to be.