As-Saffat · Makki · ayah 137 of 182

As-Saffat 37:137

وَإِنَّكُمْ لَتَمُرُّونَ عَلَيْهِم مُّصْبِحِينَ

“And indeed, you pass by them in the morning”

Saheeh International

Essence

The story suddenly turns to its listeners: you walk over their ruins every morning on your trade route, at the very hour their end came.

A reflection

Passing over, not just past

La-tamurrūna ʿalayhim, you pass by them, or more literally, over them. The root m-r-r has an established double picture. One branch is passing: clouds marra, drifting by, and a marra, one time, is a slice of time gone past. The other branch is a rope twisted hard, and bitterness. What passes, and what holds.

The preposition is ʿalā, over. A concise classical commentary explains: over their traces and their dwellings, on your journeys. An early authority quoted in a narration-based commentary is even more physical. Yes, by Allah, he said, morning and evening they tread on it. Whoever took the road from Madina to Syria went right across Sodom, the town of Lut's people.

So the Makkans were not looking at a distant ruin from a hilltop. They were walking across it. Their camels' feet passed over the ground where the town had been overturned.

Picture a group of ramblers crossing a quiet meadow on a public footpath. Halfway across, at a stile, there is a small weathered plaque. A village stood here, it says, until a plague emptied it centuries ago. Most of the walkers do not stop to read it. They are thinking about lunch. The grass under their boots is growing over the foundations of houses.

That is the scene the ayah sets. Ordinary travellers, going about their business, passing over people who once thought themselves permanent.

The root's other branch hangs over the word too. Passing can leave nothing, like clouds. Or it can be twisted tight into something that holds, a lesson bound into the mind. The ayah asks which kind of passing theirs was. It asks us the same.

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.