Al-Mu'minun · Makki · ayah 15 of 118

Al-Mu'minun 23:15

ثُمَّ إِنَّكُم بَعْدَ ذَٰلِكَ لَمَيِّتُونَ

“Then indeed, after that you are to die.”

Saheeh International

Essence

After every wonder of the making comes one plain, heavily stressed sentence: you will surely die, as certainly as you were brought to life.

A reflection

The masterpiece and the tide

The previous ayah ended in praise: blessed is Allah, the best of creators. The very next words are these: thumma innakum baʿda dhālika la-mayyitūn, then after that you will surely die. The same voice that described every stage of the making now announces the unmaking, in a single line.

One classical commentator notes that dhālika, that, is the word for something at a distance. It points back at all those wonders as things of high rank. After all of that, after the clay, the drop, the bones, the flesh, the new creation, you will die. Another commentator adds that making a person die is itself a proof of immense power, as great a sign as bringing them to life.

Picture the winner of a seaside sandcastle competition. All afternoon she has carved turrets, a moat, a bridge with tiny arches. The judges have given her the trophy. Now she sits on the sand with her family and watches the evening tide come in, wave by wave, until the castle is smooth again. Nobody pretended it would stand.

Human pride lives as if the castle were permanent. It collects, competes and boasts as though there were no tide. This ayah is the tide. It does not insult the work. The work was Allah's, and it was beautiful. It simply reminds the creature who might be tempted to forget that he did not make himself, and will not keep himself.

That is not cruelty. It is the most honest thing anyone can be told. Every ego that has ever swelled has had to meet this sentence. It is kinder to meet it now, in an ayah, than at the end, unprepared.

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.