As-Sajdah · Makki · ayah 14 of 30

As-Sajdah 32:14

فَذُوقُوا۟ بِمَا نَسِيتُمْ لِقَآءَ يَوْمِكُمْ هَـٰذَآ إِنَّا نَسِينَـٰكُمْ ۖ وَذُوقُوا۟ عَذَابَ ٱلْخُلْدِ بِمَا كُنتُمْ تَعْمَلُونَ

“So taste [punishment] because you forgot the meeting of this, your Day; indeed, We have [accordingly] forgotten you. And taste the punishment of eternity for what you used to do."”

Saheeh International

Essence

They did not lose the memory of the meeting; they stopped attending to it, and on the Day they are left as they left it.

A reflection

The messages you meant to return

A father leaves his son a voicemail every Friday. Nothing urgent. Just checking in; call when you can. The son always means to. The little red number on his phone climbs to eleven, then twenty. He has not forgotten his father. He thinks of him often. He simply never presses play.

Most of us read 'because you forgot' as a lapse of memory. And lapses of memory, we know, are forgiven. Ibn Majah reports the Prophet ﷺ saying that Allah has pardoned his community for mistakes, forgetting, and what they are forced into. The report is graded ṣaḥīḥ. So how can forgetting be the charge here?

Because this is not that kind of forgetting. One commentary says it plainly. Their forgetting means leaving off reflection on the Day and preparation for it. In this sense, it says, it is chosen, and it is blamed. Literal forgetting is hardly what is meant. Another commentary offers two readings: they acted like people who had forgotten, or they simply left it. A third names the cause. Immersion in desires distracted them, until the outcome slipped from view.

That is the son's kind of forgetting. He knows exactly who is calling. He has just never made room to listen.

The Quran calls itself a reminder again and again. Every ayah about the Day is a message left on the phone: just checking in; come when you can. The danger is not that we lose the number. It is that the red count climbs while we stay busy.

The Arabs had a call for the moment a camp was struck. Look to your ansāʾ: the small things likely to be left lying on the ground. A stick, a cup, a wooden pin. That is the root of 'you forgot'. Not a blank in the mind, but something left behind as everyone moves on.

So the question this ayah puts is practical. How many messages are waiting? What is lying on the ground as the camp moves on? And what would it take to press play today?

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.