An-Naml · Makki · ayah 14 of 93

An-Naml 27:14

وَجَحَدُوا۟ بِهَا وَٱسْتَيْقَنَتْهَآ أَنفُسُهُمْ ظُلْمًا وَعُلُوًّا ۚ فَٱنظُرْ كَيْفَ كَانَ عَـٰقِبَةُ ٱلْمُفْسِدِينَ

“And they rejected them, while their [inner] selves were convinced thereof, out of injustice and haughtiness. So see how was the end of the corrupters.”

Saheeh International

Essence

They were certain the signs were true and denied them anyway, out of wrong and pride; certainty without surrender ends where Pharaoh's court ended.

A reflection

Certain inside, denying aloud

A piano competition reaches its final round. One juror knows within a minute that the unknown candidate has played best. Her phrasing is cleaner and her slow movement braver. He has judged for thirty years, and his ear is not in doubt. He scores her third. Her teacher is his old rival, and a first prize would make that rival's name.

Nobody in the hall will ever know, except him. He walks to his car carrying two verdicts: the one he wrote down and the one he heard.

The ayah describes that split with surgical precision. Wa-jaḥadū bihā: they denied the signs. Wa-stayqanathā anfusuhum: and their own selves were certain of them. A rhetorical commentary explains why the word anfus, selves, is there at all. They denied with their tongues while certain in their hearts and inmost thoughts. The denial was public. The certainty was private. Both were real.

The verb for certainty is unusual too. It is istayqana, a heavier form than the plain ayqana. Two commentaries note that it is the stronger of the two. These were not people half-convinced. They had seen the staff and the shining hand, nine signs in all. Nothing was left to doubt.

So the ayah removes a comfortable assumption: that people who reject the truth simply have not seen it. Some have seen it perfectly. Their problem is not the eyes. It is what seeing would cost them.

Notice the grammar as well. Two commentaries read the wa as a circumstantial "while". They denied while they were certain, not before or after. The two verdicts lived side by side, in the same people, at the same moment. That is an exhausting way to live. It is also, in smaller ways, a familiar one.

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.