Al-Anbya · Makki · ayah 14 of 112

Al-Anbya 21:14

قَالُوا۟ يَـٰوَيْلَنَآ إِنَّا كُنَّا ظَـٰلِمِينَ

“They said, "O woe to us! Indeed, we were wrongdoers."”

Saheeh International

Essence

At last they said the true sentence, 'we were wrongdoers', but to their ruin rather than their Lord, and too late.

A reflection

The same confession, in the belly of the whale

Innā kunnā ẓālimīn: we were wrongdoers. Keep reading this surah and the same confession returns, almost word for word, in a very different mouth. Yunus, swallowed by the fish in the darkness, calls out: There is no god but You. Glory be to You. I was among the wrongdoers (21:87). And the next ayah answers: So We answered him and saved him from distress. And so We save the believers (21:88).

The same admission. One town said it and was cut down. One prophet said it and was brought out of the darknesses. What made the difference?

The words around the confession. The towns cried yā waylanā, O our ruin, and then confessed. Their sentence was addressed to their own destruction. Yunus began with lā ilāha illā anta, there is no god but You, and subḥānaka, glory be to You. His confession was addressed to his Lord. A commentator on our ayah says the towns spoke when they had despaired of escape by flight. Yunus spoke when he had turned to the only One who could rescue him.

Al-Tirmidhi records the Prophet ﷺ saying that the prayer of Dhu al-Nun, the man of the fish, is this very sentence. No Muslim calls with it in any matter, he said, but that Allah answers him. It is graded ṣaḥīḥ.

So the confession itself is not the problem. It is the most honest sentence a person can say. The tragedy of the towns is not that they admitted wrong. It is that they admitted it to the wrong address, at the wrong time. The surah places the two scenes seventy-three ayat apart, as if to show both endings of the same sentence. One is spoken into the void. The other is spoken to Him.

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.