An-Naml · Makki · ayah 66 of 93

An-Naml 27:66

بَلِ ٱدَّٰرَكَ عِلْمُهُمْ فِى ٱلْـَٔاخِرَةِ ۚ بَلْ هُمْ فِى شَكٍّ مِّنْهَا ۖ بَلْ هُم مِّنْهَا عَمُونَ

“Rather, their knowledge is arrested concerning the Hereafter. Rather, they are in doubt about it. Rather, they are, concerning it, blind.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The ayah goes down three steps: not knowing when the Hereafter comes, then doubting that it comes, then no longer seeing it at all.

A reflection

Three steps down, each darker than the last

A notice has been taped inside the lobby of a tower block for two years. The building is to be demolished, but no date is fixed. A tenant on the ninth floor reads it in the first week and asks when. Nobody can tell him. By the first winter he has decided it will never happen. Councils say these things. In spring, when surveyors appear with tripods, he wonders again for an evening. By the second year he walks past the notice twice a day and no longer sees it.

The ayah traces the same descent with one small word used three times. Bal: rather, no, worse. The ayah before it said no one knows when they will be raised (27:65). Then the first bal: their knowledge of the Hereafter has failed. The second: they are in doubt about it. The third: they are blind to it.

Several classical commentaries read the three as steps, each lower than the one above. Not knowing the time of the Day is no fault, since no one knows it. Not knowing that the Day will come at all is worse, because its signs are many. Doubt is worse again. Doubt can be resolved, and they leave it standing. Blindness is the bottom. One commentator compares it to an animal whose whole attention has settled on its stomach. It no longer asks whether anything is true or false.

This answers a fair question. If no one knows the unseen, why blame anyone for not knowing the Hereafter? Because the ayah blames them for the lower steps, not the first. The date is hidden from everyone. That the Day is real is not hidden. The road to that knowledge, one commentary says, is open and well travelled.

The tenant's descent took two years and needed no decision. That is what makes the ayah worth sitting with. Nobody chooses blindness. People stop looking, a little each season, until the notice becomes part of the wall.

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.