Ar-Rum · Makki · ayah 57 of 60

Ar-Rum 30:57

فَيَوْمَئِذٍ لَّا يَنفَعُ ٱلَّذِينَ ظَلَمُوا۟ مَعْذِرَتُهُمْ وَلَا هُمْ يُسْتَعْتَبُونَ

“So that Day, their excuse will not benefit those who wronged, nor will they be asked to appease [Allāh].”

Saheeh International

Essence

On that Day excuses no longer help the wrongdoers, and no one asks them to make amends; today the asking is still open.

A reflection

When no one reproaches you any more

Wa-lā hum yustaʿtabūn: nor are they asked to make amends. The verb grows from a small, homely picture.

The lexicons say the ʿataba is a doorstep, a step raised above level ground. From that small roughness came ʿatb: a grievance felt between friends, the bump in a relationship. To remove its cause and step back into someone's good favour was iʿtāb. To seek that chance, or be asked for it, was istiʿtāb.

So the commentators explain the phrase in two directions. They are not asked to win back Allah's pleasure by repentance and obedience, as they were in the world. Or, if they ask for that chance, it is not given. One commentator adds that the repentance which wipes away a crime's traces is not requested, because it would not be accepted.

Another commentator records a sharper reading still. They are treated as no longer worth reproaching at all.

Picture a friendship of twenty years. Every year one friend forgets the other's birthday. Every year she rings, half laughing, half hurt: 'You forgot again.' He apologises; they carry on. Then one year she does not ring. Nor the next. He realises, slowly, that the complaint was the friendship still asking for him. The silence means it has stopped.

That is what this ayah describes. Reproach is a form of attention. As long as someone still reproaches you, a door is open. They still expect something of you.

The Quran is full of Allah's reproach to His servants now. 'Has the time not come for those who believe, that their hearts humble themselves?' (57:16). Each such line is an invitation dressed as a rebuke. Read them as the phone still ringing. The silence of this ayah is what happens when the calls have ended.

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.