Al-Mu'minun · Makki · ayah 112 of 118

Al-Mu'minun 23:112

قَـٰلَ كَمْ لَبِثْتُمْ فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ عَدَدَ سِنِينَ

“[Allāh] will say, "How long did you remain on earth in number of years?"”

Saheeh International

Essence

One question about a whole lifetime, asked when it is over, how many years did you stay, is meant to be felt now.

A reflection

The traveller who stopped and stayed

At nineteen, a young man took a summer job at a seaside café. It was meant to be for a few months, before real life began. At sixty he still stands behind the same counter, which he now owns. He laughs when people ask how long he has been there. 'I only stopped for the summer,' he says.

Kam labithtum: how long did you stay? The lexicons say the root of labth is staying put. Labitha bi-l-makān: he stopped in a place and stayed, holding to it. An old man lagging behind the young was said to linger. A slow bow was labāth. And a saying ran: when water stands too long, its foulness shows.

The word has a quiet sadness in it. It does not describe settling in a home. It describes a traveller who paused, meaning to move on, and stayed. Its whole meaning depends on the end. You do not know how long you lingered until the lingering is over.

That is exactly how the question in this ayah is framed. It is asked in the hereafter, about the earth. One classical commentator explains: about how long they lived on it, the land they now beg to return to. The earth was a stopping place, a pause on a journey. They treated it as the destination.

The Quran uses the same word for other stays. The sleepers of the cave asked one another how long they had stayed, and guessed a day or part of a day (18:19). Each time, the stay turns out to be different from how it felt.

So read the ayah as a traveller reads a timetable. You are lābith, staying for a while, on the earth. The question is not whether you will move on. It is whether you will have used the stop well, or let it stand so long that, like the old saying, something began to spoil.

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.