Al-Mu'minun · Makki · ayah 68 of 118

Al-Mu'minun 23:68

أَفَلَمْ يَدَّبَّرُوا۟ ٱلْقَوْلَ أَمْ جَآءَهُم مَّا لَمْ يَأْتِ ءَابَآءَهُمُ ٱلْأَوَّلِينَ

“Then have they not reflected over the word [i.e., the Qur’ān], or has there come to them that which had not come to their forefathers?”

Saheeh International

Essence

Have they walked round behind the Word to see where it leads, or did its newness put them off?

A reflection

Walking round to the back of a thing

A woman is handed a mortgage offer. The first page shows the monthly payment, which looks manageable. She turns straight to the last page. There it is: the total repayable after twenty-five years. She sits back and thinks again.

A-fa-lam yaddabbarū al-qawl: have they not pondered the Word? One concise commentary notes that yaddabbarū is yatadabbarū with the letters merged. The root is d-b-r, and the lexicons give it an established picture: the back of a thing and its end, the opposite of its front.

From that comes a family of images. An arrow that flies past the target is dābir. The star al-Dabarān was named for following the Pleiades. To show your dubur in battle was to flee. And tadabbur is thinking about where a matter ends.

One lexicon records a line by an old poet mocking people who grasped a matter only tadabburan: in hindsight, once the harm had come. The Quran asks for that look before the end arrives.

So pondering, in this root, means walking round to the back of an ayah. Not stopping at its front page, but following it to where it leads. Into your choices. Into your relationships. Into your last day.

That is exactly what the woman did with the mortgage. The front page was true but incomplete. The back page told her what the front page meant.

The people of this ayah had done the opposite. In the ayat before, they showed their backs to the Quran, retreating on their heels. They never walked round to see where it led.

One commentator gives the purpose of pondering. It is to know from what is in it that it is the truth from their Lord, and so believe. Another says it is to learn its lessons and recognise the proofs it brings.

So when you read an ayah, turn to the last page. Ask: if I lived by this, where would it take me? And if I ignored it, where would that end?

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.