Taha · Makki · ayah 111 of 135

Taha 20:111

۞ وَعَنَتِ ٱلْوُجُوهُ لِلْحَىِّ ٱلْقَيُّومِ ۖ وَقَدْ خَابَ مَنْ حَمَلَ ظُلْمًا

“And [all] faces will be humbled before the Ever-Living, the Self-Sustaining.[858] And he will have failed who carries injustice.[859]”

Saheeh International

Essence

Every face will be lowered like a captive's before the Ever-Living who holds all things up, and whoever arrives carrying wrong has hoped in vain.

A reflection

The face we spend our lives arranging

Think about how much of a life goes into the face. We wash it, shave it, paint it, photograph it from the good side. We learn to arrange it in meetings so no one sees we are hurt. We say someone has 'lost face', and we mean they have lost everything that matters in public. The face is where pride lives.

The commentaries notice this too. Why does the ayah say faces are humbled, and not people? Because the face is the noblest part of the body that can be seen, and the first place where humiliation shows. Arabs called the leading men of a tribe its wujūh, its faces. One reading even takes the faces here as the great ones: the proud, the prominent, the people whose faces everyone knew.

And the verb chosen is severe. ʿAnat, from ʿanā, to be humbled as a prisoner is humbled. The prisoner of war was al-ʿānī. One early reading says plainly: the faces become captives, all of them, to the Ever-Living, the Self-Sustaining.

So picture the whole parade of human faces. The famous ones and the unknown ones. The ones on banknotes, the ones on magazine covers, the one you checked in the mirror this morning. All lowered, all held, every expression rearranged by one fact: there is a King, and it is not you.

That sounds crushing. But consider what it ends. The endless managing of how you appear. The fear of losing face. The need to look like more than you are. On that Day there is nothing left to arrange.

The arrogant face cannot bear this ayah. The humble face finds it strangely restful. It already knows where it belongs, and it has been practising, as the next reflection shows, every day.

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.