Al-Kahf · Makki · ayah 99 of 110

Al-Kahf 18:99

۞ وَتَرَكْنَا بَعْضَهُمْ يَوْمَئِذٍ يَمُوجُ فِى بَعْضٍ ۖ وَنُفِخَ فِى ٱلصُّورِ فَجَمَعْنَـٰهُمْ جَمْعًا

“And We will leave them that day[800] surging over each other, and [then] the Horn will be blown, and We will assemble them in [one] assembly.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The verb for leaving them is the one the Arabs used of an ostrich's egg abandoned in open desert.

A reflection

Water heaped on water, and nothing distinguishable

The verb in the middle of this verse is the sea's.

The lexicons give the root as a thing in agitation that never settles: water risen above water. From it comes a crowd churning and running into itself, and an affair falling into disorder.

And one more use, which is the one to hold. The same root is used of sliding off the truth.

A legal commentary reads the image exactly this way. The metaphor of waves expresses bewilderment and milling about, like people distracted with worry and fear. They are likened to the sea's waves beating one against another.

Stand at a weir on a swollen river. The water above the sill is heaped on itself, and nothing in it has a shape. There is no individual water. There is a mass with a direction.

Now put the whole chapter against that picture.

A man built two gardens and called himself greater in wealth and mightier in men. Young men took a decision in a cave that distinguished them for three hundred years. A king crossed the world and left a wall standing between two mountains.

Every one of those is a person with an outline.

And this verse dissolves all of it into water. Some of them surging in others. Not named, not numbered, not sorted. Heaped.

There is a particular vanity that this ends, and it is not the vanity of achievement. It is the quieter and more universal conviction that one is a distinct case.

Everybody secretly believes the general rule has an exception shaped like them. It is why warnings are agreed with and not acted on.

The verse takes the whole species and treats it as hydrology.

And then, in the same breath, it does the opposite. The Horn is blown and We gathered them in one gathering. The mass is handled by One who is not in it, and who can gather what no one could count.

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.