Taha · Makki · ayah 124 of 135

Taha 20:124

وَمَنْ أَعْرَضَ عَن ذِكْرِى فَإِنَّ لَهُۥ مَعِيشَةً ضَنكًا وَنَحْشُرُهُۥ يَوْمَ ٱلْقِيَـٰمَةِ أَعْمَىٰ

“And whoever turns away from My remembrance - indeed, he will have a depressed [i.e., difficult] life, and We will gather [i.e., raise] him on the Day of Resurrection blind."”

Saheeh International

Essence

Turn your side to His remembrance and life grows narrow, however wide it looks: a glass office over the city whose windows will not open.

A reflection

Not a poor life: a narrow one

Most people who know this ayah have filed it under a simple heading. Turn away from God and life goes badly: poverty, misfortune, trouble. So when they meet a wealthy, relaxed, unbelieving neighbour, the ayah quietly seems not to work.

But the word is not poverty. It is ḍank. The lexicons define it as narrowness and pressure: a cramped place, a pinched living. Clouds that thickened and pressed together were said to ḍanuka. And one early explanation they record is startling: a life from unlawful means is ḍank, however spacious it seems.

The commentaries take exactly this line. One classical commentator explains the narrow life as a life with no calm and no openness of the chest. His chest is tight and constricted, he says, even if outwardly he lives in comfort. He wears what he likes, eats what he likes, lives where he likes. But as long as his heart has not reached certainty and guidance, it stays in agitation, confusion and doubt. An early teacher said: He strips him of contentment, so that he is never full.

Picture a corner office on the thirty-first floor of a glass tower. The view takes in the whole city: river, bridges, hills on the horizon. The furniture is beautiful. And the windows do not open. By four in the afternoon the air is stale and the light is hard. The person at the desk has a headache that no view can cure.

That is maʿīshatan ḍankā. Not a small room. A wide room with no air.

So the ayah is not a promise that unbelievers will be poor, or that believers will be comfortable. It is a diagnosis of where breathing room comes from. Possessions widen the walls. Only remembrance opens the windows.

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.