Al-Kahf · Makki · ayah 12 of 110

Al-Kahf 18:12

ثُمَّ بَعَثْنَـٰهُمْ لِنَعْلَمَ أَىُّ ٱلْحِزْبَيْنِ أَحْصَىٰ لِمَا لَبِثُوٓا۟ أَمَدًا

“Then We awakened them that We might show which of the two factions was most precise in calculating what [extent] they had remained in time.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The verb used for waking them is the verb used for raising the dead, and the reason given is a dispute about how long.

A reflection

The word is the one used for the dead

The verb in this ayah is not a gentle word for waking. It is the one the Qur'an uses of the resurrection.

The lexicons give the picture. A camel is kneeling with its foreleg hobbled. The traveller unties the cord, gets the animal up and sends it on. That is the root: removing whatever was holding a thing back from moving. So a sleeper is raised, an army is sent out, a messenger is sent. And the dead are raised from where they lay, as a camel rises from the ground.

One commentary makes it explicit. Anyone brought back to life, or got up from sleep, is called raised, because he had been prevented from rising and from acting.

Sit with what that says about every morning you have ever had. You were prevented. Something was untied, and you got up, and you went about the day as the author of it.

An engineman knows the feeling physically. A big mill engine that stops on dead centre will not start again on steam, however much pressure is in the boiler. A man has to go down with a bar and lever the flywheel past the point by hand. Thirty years at the controls and the lesson is the same every time: a running engine is not a self-starting engine.

The ego survives on the illusion of continuity. The hobble is untied nightly, by someone else, without being mentioned.

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.