There is one interesting verse which, I felt, spoke directly to me from right off the page. It mentions two words in Arabic, al-khabeeth (the evil), and al-taib (the good). The verse reads:

"Say, the evil and the good are not comparable, even though the abundance of evil will surprise you. So be mindful of your duty to Allah, O Man of understanding that you may succeed."(5:100)

Well, I had a look at those two words in Arabic, the evil and the food, and found it in the Qur'an that they both occur seven times. Yet the verse here is saying that they are not comparable. I should not expect to find that they occur the same number of times. But what does the rest of this verse say?

"The evil and the good are not comparable. The abundance of the evil will surprise you" and it did for there were too many of them. But it continues:

"So be mindful of your duty to Allah, O Man of understanding, that you may succeed."

So press on. Use your understanding and you will succeed. That is what the verse said to me. Well, I found the answer in one verse further on where it reads:

"Allah separates the evil from the good. The evil HE piles one on top of the other, heaping them all together."

Here is the solution to the difficulty. While we have several occurrences of al-taif (the good), according to the principle of this verse, evil is separated from good and is piled one on top of the other and heaped all together. We can not count them as seven separate instances.