Al-Kahf · Makki · ayah 48 of 110

Al-Kahf 18:48

وَعُرِضُوا۟ عَلَىٰ رَبِّكَ صَفًّا لَّقَدْ جِئْتُمُونَا كَمَا خَلَقْنَـٰكُمْ أَوَّلَ مَرَّةٍۭ ۚ بَلْ زَعَمْتُمْ أَلَّن نَّجْعَلَ لَكُم مَّوْعِدًا

“And they will be presented before your Lord in rows, [and He will say], "You have certainly come to Us just as We created you the first time. But you claimed that We would never make for you an appointment."”

Saheeh International

Essence

Presented in ranks, in a word whose root is levelness: one line, with nobody ahead of anybody and nobody behind.

A reflection

The man who inspected goods is now the goods

The verb for being presented comes from a root the lexicons begin with breadth: width, the opposite of length. Then laying something crosswise, so that it lies across a path or over the mouth of a vessel. Then displaying a thing: goods, troops, a trust held for somebody.

And in the same entry: what comes and goes, which is the ordinary Arabic word for the passing goods of this world.

So the word for being inspected and the word for the stuff of this world are the same root.

That is worth holding against the four verses before this one, which were about wealth and children, vines and gold and withered stalk. Those are the passing goods. And now the people who dealt in them all their lives are themselves presented.

A corn factor spends forty years pushing a sampling iron into other men's sacks. He knows the feel of a sack that has been wetted and dried. He can tell from a handful whether a man is telling the truth about his floor. He has never once been on the other side of that transaction. His whole sense of his own competence is built on which side of it he stands.

Then one morning a hand goes into his.

Pride is nearly always a position rather than a quality. Inspector, not inspected. Asking, not asked. The arrogance does not usually announce itself, because it feels like simple experience, and it survives precisely by never changing sides.

The verse changes sides for everybody, in the first three words.

The full entry has 5 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.