Luqman · Makki · ayah 24 of 34

Luqman 31:24

نُمَتِّعُهُمْ قَلِيلًا ثُمَّ نَضْطَرُّهُمْ إِلَىٰ عَذَابٍ غَلِيظٍ

“We grant them enjoyment for a little; then We will force them to a massive punishment.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Seven words weigh a lifetime: a little enjoyment He gives, then a compulsion none escapes, into a punishment as thick as the pleasure was thin.

A reflection

Little, by whose measure?

At a family firm's centenary dinner, the chairman rises to speak. 'A hundred years,' he says, and lets it hang. 'In business, that is a very long time.' The room applauds. Photographs of four generations line the walls. Nobody in the hall was alive when the first ledger was opened.

This ayah speaks of a whole lifetime of pleasure and calls it qalīlan: a little. One commentary explains the word plainly. It may mean a little enjoyment, or a little time. Either way, whatever ends is little beside what lasts. A century of comfort is small when the One measuring it is the One who was before it and remains after it.

Notice who is speaking. Numattiʿuhum: We grant them enjoyment. Naḍṭarruhum: We will force them. Two ayat earlier, the deniers spoke in their own plural: bal nattabiʿu, no, we will follow our fathers (31:21). They chose, and said so proudly. Here a greater We answers. The enjoyment they took as their own was His gift all along. And the end they assumed they would choose will not be theirs to choose.

That is humbling, and meant to be. The ego is impressed by its own durations and its own decisions. Our hundred years. Our way of doing things. The ayah measures both from outside, and both shrink.

Someone may ask: does this language of force show a need to dominate? Read it beside the rest of the Quran. In this world, He compels no one into faith: there is no compulsion in religion (2:256). The compulsion described here comes only after the choosing is over. And He gains nothing from it. Two ayat later the surah calls Him the Free of need (31:26). One commentary on that line adds that His servants need Him, while He needs none of them. The power is real. The vanity a human would bring to it is absent.

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.