Taha · Makki · ayah 127 of 135

Taha 20:127

وَكَذَٰلِكَ نَجْزِى مَنْ أَسْرَفَ وَلَمْ يُؤْمِنۢ بِـَٔايَـٰتِ رَبِّهِۦ ۚ وَلَعَذَابُ ٱلْـَٔاخِرَةِ أَشَدُّ وَأَبْقَىٰٓ

“And thus do We recompense he who transgressed and did not believe in the signs of his Lord. And the punishment of the Hereafter is more severe and more enduring.[865]”

Saheeh International

Essence

Pharaoh boasted whose punishment was harsher and more lasting; the surah settles it: what truly lasts awaits those who overlooked the signs.

A reflection

Pharaoh’s boast, answered

The last two words of this ayah, ashaddu wa-abqā, more severe and more lasting, have been heard before in this surah. That is the key to it.

Go back to the sorcerers who believed in Moses. Pharaoh threatened them with cutting off hands and feet, and crucifixion on palm trunks. Then he boasted: you will surely know which of us is more severe in punishment and more lasting (20:71). The very same pair of words. The sorcerers answered him without flinching: Allah is better and more lasting (20:73).

Now, many ayat later, the surah comes back to those words and settles the question. It is not Pharaoh's punishment that is more severe and more lasting. It is the punishment of the Hereafter. One commentary explains: more severe because of its greatness, more lasting because it does not end. Another: more terrible than the narrow life and the grave, and enduring without break.

And four ayat later the word abqā returns once more: your Lord's provision is better and more lasting (20:131). The whole surah turns on one question: what lasts?

Pharaoh had a real power to hurt. He used it, and he boasted of it. But his 'lasting' was a few hours on a palm trunk. The sorcerers saw through it. They knew that every tyrant's threat is, in the end, temporary, and that only Allah's promise and Allah's warning are permanent.

That is a liberating perspective. Every human threat you face, a boss's anger, a bully's power, a hostile system, is small by this measure. It may be severe, but it is not lasting. What should truly weigh on a person is not what people can do to them, but where they will stand before what does not end.

Ask, in any hard choice: which consequence is the lasting one? Then choose as the sorcerers chose.

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.