Al-Anbya · Makki · ayah 39 of 112

Al-Anbya 21:39

لَوْ يَعْلَمُ ٱلَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا۟ حِينَ لَا يَكُفُّونَ عَن وُجُوهِهِمُ ٱلنَّارَ وَلَا عَن ظُهُورِهِمْ وَلَا هُمْ يُنصَرُونَ

“If those who disbelieved but knew the time when they will not avert the Fire from their faces or from their backs and they will not be aided...[885]”

Saheeh International

Essence

If only the mockers knew the moment they demand: fire at face and back, no hand to push it away, no helper.

A reflection

Knowing, when it no longer helps

Law yaʿlamu alladhīna kafarū ḥīna: if only those who disbelieve knew the time. One classical commentator makes the link with the ayah before explicit. They had asked: when is this promise? This ayah names the very time they were asking about. If they knew what that time held, they would never have asked for it to hurry.

Another commentator puts the diagnosis in one line. It was their ignorance of it that made it seem light to them. Mockery feeds on not knowing.

A later scholar, quoted in a classical commentary, pictures the ayah as answering an unspoken question. If they do not know now, when will they know? And the answer comes: at the time when knowing no longer benefits them.

Picture a homeowner who receives a letter from the council about flood risk on his street. He jokes about it at dinner: "They've been saying that for years." He does not move the boxes from the cellar or buy the sandbags. One winter night he wakes at three to a strange sound, goes downstairs, and finds water at the foot of the stairs. Now he knows exactly what the letter meant. The knowledge is perfectly clear and perfectly useless.

That is the shape of the ayah. The tragedy is not ignorance itself; everyone begins ignorant. The tragedy is knowledge arriving one moment too late, after the door to acting on it has closed.

The ayah is, in that sense, a kindness. It brings the knowledge forward. It tells you now, while it can still change something, what the moment holds. A narration-based commentary says that, had they known, they would have hurried to repentance instead of hurrying the punishment. The same choice is open to every reader, today.

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.