Al-Furqan · Makki · ayah 14 of 77

Al-Furqan 25:14

لَّا تَدْعُوا۟ ٱلْيَوْمَ ثُبُورًا وَٰحِدًا وَٱدْعُوا۟ ثُبُورًا كَثِيرًا

“[They will be told], "Do not cry this Day for one destruction but cry for much destruction."”

Saheeh International

Essence

They cry for one ruin to end it all, and learn that no ending is coming; the only open door is today's.

A reflection

When there is no ending to ask for

In the previous ayah they cried out for ruin. A classical commentator explains what that cry really asks for. They want destruction because destruction would end the torment. Death, at that point, looks like rescue.

The reply is devastating in its logic. Do not call today for one ruin. Call for many. The same commentator draws out a subtle point, saying he had not seen anyone make it before. One ending, in ordinary life, frees a person. Here no single ending will come, and countless endings are impossible. So the reply closes the very door they were hoping for.

A hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari pictures the same closing. On the Day, death is brought forward in the form of a ram and slaughtered between the Garden and the Fire. Then it is called out: people of the Garden, eternity, and no death. People of the Fire, eternity, and no death.

Human beings bear pain by knowing it ends. In the dentist's chair, the drill whines and the dentist says: ten more seconds. You can hold on for ten seconds. Tell someone the pain has no end, and something in them gives way.

This is why the ayah is not only frightening. It is clarifying. There is only one place where 'this too will pass' is guaranteed to be true. It is this life.

Every illness here ends, in recovery or in death. Every debt, every grief, every hard year ends. Even the longest night in this world has a dawn behind it.

That makes the trials of this life, however heavy, a different kind of thing. They have edges. They can be carried with patience because they have a last day. And the believer is promised that patience through them counts for something that does not end.

So when you feel today that you cannot go on, remember the dentist's ten seconds. Your hardship has a count. The only hardship without one is the one this ayah warns you away from.

The full entry has 4 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.