The 365 · Verses · Day 274 · Justice
Whatever good you send ahead is already waiting for you with God.
وَأَقِيمُوا۟ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ وَءَاتُوا۟ ٱلزَّكَوٰةَ ۚ وَمَا تُقَدِّمُوا۟ لِأَنفُسِكُم مِّنْ خَيْرٍ تَجِدُوهُ عِندَ ٱللَّهِ ۗ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ بِمَا تَعْمَلُونَ بَصِيرٌ
“Keep up the prayer and pay the prescribed alms. Whatever good you store up for yourselves, you will find it with God: He sees everything you do. (Quran 2:110)”
2:110 Read 2:110 with tafsir
Svenska: Förrätta bönen och ge åt de nödställda! Det goda ni sänder framför er [till Domen] skall ni återfinna hos Gud; Gud ser vad ni gör.
The story
After a long passage urging the believers to bear patiently with hostility from the People of the Book, the āyah pivots to what they should be doing instead of stewing: 'establish the prayer, give the zakāh, and whatever good you send forward for yourselves, you will find it with Allah.' Ibn Kathīr reads this as a deliberate redirection - Allah steers the believers toward deeds that will pay out on the Day of Resurrection, prayer and zakāh chief among them, so that they secure His help in this life and are not left empty on a Day when 'the excuses of the wrongdoers will not benefit them' (40:52). The phrase 'you will find it with Allah' he takes at full weight: nothing is lost with Him. And the closing clause, 'Allah sees everything you do,' Ibn Kathīr glosses as promise and warning at once - He is never unaware of any deed, and He will requite each person by their deeds, good or evil, giving everyone exactly what they earned. Al-Zamakhsharī reads the same movement: 'of any good' means any righteous act at all - a prayer, a charity, or anything else - and 'you will find it with Allah' means you will find its reward stored with Him, for He is Baṣīr, seeing, and no doer's deed is ever wasted before Him. Set inside the theme of justice, the verse describes a ledger that never errs: what you advance toward your own account cannot be misplaced, overlooked, or denied. In a world where good deeds often go unthanked and injustice often goes unpunished, 2:110 quietly guarantees a final accounting where every atom of good is found, intact, exactly where you sent it.
In the language
The verb tuqaddimū - 'you send forward, you advance ahead' - carries the verse's whole image. It is the language of dispatching something so that it arrives before you do. Ibn Kathīr renders it 'whatever good you send forth for yourselves before you,' so the good deed becomes a courier sent ahead to the Hereafter, waiting at the destination when you arrive. Al-Zamakhsharī completes the thought on the other end: tajidūhu ʿinda Allāh means 'you will find its reward stored up with Allah.' Between the two verbs - tuqaddimū, to send ahead, and tajidū, to find - the deed travels intact from this world to the next, and the seal ʿinda Allāh, 'with Allah,' names the safest possible keeping. The wording turns worship and charity from expenditure into deposit: not wealth spent and gone, but wealth forwarded to an account that the closing name Baṣīr, the All-Seeing, guarantees is perfectly kept.
Why this verse
Good done in a careless world can feel wasted - unseen, unthanked, unrewarded. This āyah answers that whatever good you send ahead is kept perfectly with Allah, who 'sees everything you do.' Ibn Kathīr: no deed is ever lost with Him. That is justice guaranteed.
Bring it into today
When you do good that no one notices - the honest work no one checks, the kindness with no audience, the right choice that costs you - this āyah tells you where it went. You sent it forward. It is not gone; it is waiting 'with Allah.' Let that reshape two habits. First, keep giving even when it goes unacknowledged; the verse pairs prayer and zakāh precisely as the deeds to invest in, so make your charity and your ṣalāh regular deposits rather than moods. Second, stop needing the world to settle your accounts. If someone wronged you and got away with it, or you did right and got nothing back, the clause 'Allah sees everything you do' is your release: the ledger is His, and it is exact. Do the good, send it ahead, and let the receipt sit with the One who never loses a record. Then act again tomorrow, knowing none of it evaporates.
A reflection to carry
There is deep relief in the picture this āyah draws. We spend so much energy resenting the good that goes unrewarded and the wrong that goes unpunished, as if this life were the final tally. The verb tuqaddimū reframes it: the good you do is not spent, it is sent ahead - forwarded to an account you will reach later. Ibn Kathīr insists nothing is lost with Allah, and the closing 'He sees everything you do' means no deed slips past His notice, good or bad. So justice is not something you must wring out of an indifferent world; it is guaranteed at the destination. That frees you to keep doing good without keeping score here, because the score is already kept there - perfectly, by the All-Seeing, with everything you forwarded intact and waiting.
Sources: Ibn Kathīr, al-Zamakhsharī (al-Kashshāf). The Qur'an and its translation are verified; the scholarship is retold faithfully in our own words and credited to its sources, never reproduced verbatim.
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