Maryam · Makki · ayah 59 of 98

Maryam 19:59

۞ فَخَلَفَ مِنۢ بَعْدِهِمْ خَلْفٌ أَضَاعُوا۟ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ وَٱتَّبَعُوا۟ ٱلشَّهَوَٰتِ ۖ فَسَوْفَ يَلْقَوْنَ غَيًّا

“But there came after them successors [i.e., later generations] who neglected prayer and pursued desires; so they are going to meet evil[819] -”

Saheeh International

Essence

The heirs of the prophets did not tear the prayer down; they stopped tending it, and an untended field goes to waste on its own.

A reflection

Not about people who never pray

Most readers hear this ayah as a description of someone else. Earlier nations who abandoned their scriptures. People who never pray at all. Perhaps the young, these days. It is a verse we nod at from a safe distance.

The earliest authorities did not let it stay at a distance. Several of them said the losing here was not abandoning prayer, but letting its times slip. One Companion was asked about the Qur'an's many references to guarding prayer and being constant in it. He answered: it means their times. His listeners were surprised. They had assumed it meant not giving prayer up altogether.

One of the leading early commentators preferred the other view: that these people did not pray at all. He points to the next ayah, which speaks of those who repent and believe, as if belief had been missing. Both readings are recorded. Neither lets the reader off.

The commentaries also disagree about who is meant. Some name earlier communities who came after their prophets. Others, among the earliest, said it describes people of this very community, in later times. One careful commentator puts it exactly: there will be people in this community with this description.

Now look at the verb itself. Not tarakū, they left it. Aḍāʿū: they let it go to waste. The root pictures land that slowly goes to ruin because no one keeps checking on it. Nobody bulldozes a field. They just stop walking out to it.

That is how most prayer is lost. Not in a decision, but in a drift. Prayed late, then prayed fast, then prayed later still, then made up at night, then missed. The person never stopped believing. They stopped tending.

The ayah does not describe a stranger. It describes a slope, and invites the reader to check where on it they stand.

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.