And when your Lord proclaimed: "If you give thanks , I will give you more, but if you are thankless , verily! My Punishment is indeed severe." [Surah Ibrahim 14:7]

وَإِذْ تَأَذَّنَ رَبُّكُمْ لَئِن شَكَرْتُمْ لَأَزِيدَنَّكُمْ ۖ وَلَئِن كَفَرْتُمْ إِنَّ عَذَابِي لَشَدِيدٌ

And when your Lord proclaimed: "If you give thanks , I will give you more, but if you are thankless , verily! My Punishment is indeed severe." [Surah Ibrahim 14:7]

The Secret to Happiness:

لَئِن شَكَرْتُمْ لأَزِيدَنَّكُمْ

If you give thanks, I will give you more

This verse contains one of the secrets to happiness, success and contentment, and it is as though Allaah is saying to us, “I shall impart this simple secret to you if you are wise enough to take heed.” 

The secret? “All you have to do is be thankful to Me for what I have given you, and oh-so-much-more will come your way. All you have to do is to thank Me, and your rizq [provisions] will come; you need not worry about overburdening yourself and spending sunrise to sunset seeking your rizq [provisions] (although of course you should work), just give Me thanks and praise Me for what you already have and I will give you more!”

How is He saying all of this through just 3 words? By emphasizing the concept, then emphasizing it more, then emphasizing it once again, and even emphasizing it a fourth time, so that there is no doubt in our minds about it.

In just these three short words, there are four emphases; or to be even more accurate there are only two words that make up this clause for the third is entirely for emphasis. 

Be Grateful, Allah will give you more:

لَئِن شَكَرْتُمْ لأَزِيدَنَّكُمْ

If you give thanks, I will give you more

The first two emphasis are the initial laam al-qasm followed by the particle إِنْ in لَئِن; the third is another laam al-Qasm in  لأَزِيدَنَّكُمْ and the fourth is the letter noon of emphasis in the same word. Four different instances of emphases for one concept – that if we thank Allaah for what He has already given us, He will provide us with more.

[This is because the La لَ is used as an emphasis [to strengthen the certainty of the statement], and the the 'In إِنْ means 'without doubt'.]

Look back now to the English translation, If you give thanks, I will give you more.  Diyaa’i mentioned in his article Dalaalat al-Tawkeed fee al-Jumlah al-‘Arabiyyah, one of the aims of using emphasis in Arabic is to remove all doubts from the mind of the addressee about a concept which would otherwise contain doubts.

The greater the doubts, or the more important the concept, the greater the number of emphases used. So when you have a concept which has been emphasized four times, this should tell us how important this concept is to us.

..But if you're ungrateful:

And just as this part of the verse has been emphasized four times, so too has the second part of the verse warning us of the consequences of being ungrateful; a warning from which we seemingly prefer to turn our ears by not granting ourselves access to it,

وَلَئِن كَفَرْتُمْ إِنَّ عَذَابِي لَشَدِيدٌ

..but if you are thankless, verily! My Punishment is indeed severe.

Something to think about next time we complain.