An-Naml · Makki · ayah 85 of 93

An-Naml 27:85

وَوَقَعَ ٱلْقَوْلُ عَلَيْهِم بِمَا ظَلَمُوا۟ فَهُمْ لَا يَنطِقُونَ

“And the decree will befall them[1088] for the wrong they did, and they will not [be able to] speak.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The promised word lands on the deniers because of their own wrong, and those who had so much to say against the signs fall silent.

A reflection

The word that has landed

The phrase waqaʿa al-qawlu ʿalayhim appeared three ayat ago (27:82). It returns here almost word for word. But something has changed between the two.

In 27:82 it sat inside a condition: when the word falls due. One commentary reads that first falling as drawing near. In the same way, "the command of Allah has come" speaks of what is about to arrive (16:1). Here there is no "when". It is a plain past: and the word fell upon them.

The root gives this a picture. Its single origin, one lexicon says, is the falling of a thing. A bird was wāqiʿ when it folded its wings and came down. The place it landed was its mawqiʿ. What was in the air is now on the ground, and it stays there. The same root gives tawqīʿ, a signature added at the foot of a finished document.

Picture two companies that have argued over a contract for eight months. Drafts fly back and forth. Clauses are struck out and restored. Then one afternoon the last signature goes on the last page. The lawyers stop talking. There is nothing left to negotiate. Whatever the terms say, they now simply are.

The deniers spent their lives treating the word as something still in the air. They called it tales of the ancients (27:68). They asked mockingly when it would come (27:71). In this ayah it has landed, and the signature is on the page.

Yet there is mercy in meeting this sentence now. The reader encounters the landed word as a line in a book, not as a fact underfoot. For you, 27:85 still describes someone else's ending. Above your own head the bird is still in the air, wings open.

That is what a warning is: a verdict described while it can still be avoided. The Quran shows the signed page so that you will not sign it.

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.