Al-Mu'minun · Makki · ayah 16 of 118

Al-Mu'minun 23:16

ثُمَّ إِنَّكُمْ يَوْمَ ٱلْقِيَـٰمَةِ تُبْعَثُونَ

“Then indeed you, on the Day of Resurrection, will be resurrected.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The account of a human life does not end at the grave: on the Day of Standing, everyone who died will be roused and raised.

A reflection

Raised, not rising

The verb at the end of this ayah is passive: tubʿathūn, you will be raised. Not you will rise, as though people might lift themselves out of the earth by their own strength. Someone else does the raising. The whole passage has been built this way. We created, We made, We clothed, We brought forth. Even the one act that every human being thinks of as their own, getting up, is here something done to them.

The root b-ʿ-th carries an established picture from desert travel. A rider untied the cord that hobbled his camel's foreleg, or made it rise from kneeling, and sent it on its way. That was baʿatha al-baʿīr. The lexicons sum up the idea as removing whatever held a thing back from moving. A sleeper is roused this way. A messenger is sent this way. And the dead are raised this way: unhobbled, stood up and sent on.

Picture a man in a care home who for forty years was a builder. He carried hods of bricks up ladders and lifted other men's loads without thinking. Now, every morning, two carers take his arms and stand him up from the bed. He has learned to say bismillāh as they lift.

That is the posture this ayah teaches about the final morning. No one raises themselves on the Day of Resurrection. Not the strong, not the rich, not the clever. The ego that imagines itself self-made meets, in this single passive verb, its last correction.

There is comfort in it too. The One who unhobbles the camel and stands it up is the same One who made you from clay and drop and clinging thing. You were never standing by your own strength. You will not need to on that day either.

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.