Al-Mu'minun · Makki · ayah 82 of 118

Al-Mu'minun 23:82

قَالُوٓا۟ أَءِذَا مِتْنَا وَكُنَّا تُرَابًا وَعِظَـٰمًا أَءِنَّا لَمَبْعُوثُونَ

“They said, "When we have died and become dust and bones, are we indeed to be resurrected?”

Saheeh International

Essence

A voice from the grave asks whether the dead will rise, and the dust it fears makes every proud man a peer.

A reflection

A voice from a wax cylinder

A museum plays a wax-cylinder recording made in the 1890s. A man's voice crackles through: confident, joking, sure of himself. The visitors smile. Then it lands. Everyone in that recording has been dust for a century, and the voice is still talking.

One concise commentary reads the subject of qālū, they said, as the former ones from the previous ayah. Either way, the words are theirs, inherited by Makkah. So this is a voice from the grave asking whether there is life beyond the grave. They ask: when we have died and become dust and bones, shall we really be raised?

The ayah sits right after 23:80: He gives life and death, and night and day are His. The answer to the question had been set out one line before it was asked. Another commentary pictures what they meant: bodies decayed, bones stripped of their flesh.

Those who first said it have now reached the state they described. The question they asked mockingly has been answered for them, from the inside.

The full entry has 2 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.