Ya-Sin · Makki · ayah 26 of 83

Ya-Sin 36:26

قِيلَ ٱدْخُلِ ٱلْجَنَّةَ ۖ قَالَ يَـٰلَيْتَ قَوْمِى يَعْلَمُونَ

“It was said, "Enter Paradise."[1263] He said, "I wish my people could know”

Saheeh International

Essence

With no gap after his killing, he is told to enter the Garden, and his first wish there is for the people who killed him.

A reflection

No gap, and no named speaker

After four months on a ward, a man in his sixties is finally going home. As his wheelchair turns into the corridor, the nurses are waiting. They line both walls and clap him all the way to the lift. Nobody gives a speech. The whole corridor is the welcome.

This ayah opens without warning. One moment the man is saying 'so hear me' to a town about to kill him. The next, qīla udkhuli al-janna: it was said, enter the Garden. The killing is not narrated at all.

Two commentators explain the jump. The sentence is built as an answer to a question the listener is bound to ask. After all that firmness, after giving his life for his Lord, how did he find the meeting? The answer: it was said, enter the Garden. They add that the speaker is not named because what matters is what was said.

Another commentator draws out more. When Allah speaks of punishing the town two ayat later, He says 'We', the plural of majesty. Here the verb is left without a subject. That way, he suggests, it is said to him by every angel and every righteous soul who sees him. It is like a bridegroom entering a decorated house, congratulated by everyone present.

The commentators discuss how he entered before the Last Day. The majority hold that he was killed and his soul entered, as the souls of the martyrs do (3:169). Others take it as glad news that the Garden was his. All agree on the heart of it. He was honoured at once.

Whoever pays a price for the truth may picture that corridor. The cost comes, and then, with nothing in between, the welcome.

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.