Sad · Makki · ayah 81 of 88

Sad 38:81

إِلَىٰ يَوْمِ ٱلْوَقْتِ ٱلْمَعْلُومِ

“Until the Day of the time well-known."”

Saheeh International

Essence

Iblīs asked for time reaching past death itself; he was given time up to a moment Allah fixed, which no pleading moves.

A reflection

He asked to outlive death

Residents of a tower block marked for demolition go to court and win a delay. The date moves from March to June. They win again, and it moves to September. Each time there is a small celebration on the landing. Through all of it, the demolition never once leaves the council's plan.

Read the request and the answer side by side. Iblīs asked: give me respite 'until the Day they are raised' (38:79). He was told: you are of those given respite 'until the Day of the known time'. The two phrases sound close. They are not the same day.

One classical commentary explains what he was reaching for. If he were spared until the Resurrection, he would not die before it. And on the Day of Resurrection no one dies. So the request was a clever bid to escape death altogether. Another commentary says it simply: the accursed one wanted not to die, and that was not granted.

What he received instead was a deferral to 'the known time'. The commentaries broadly identify it with the first blast of the Trumpet, when every living creature dies. He was not given the Day of Raising he asked for. He was given an earlier day, the day of the end. Respite, yes; exemption, no.

There is something deeply human in that request. The ego can bargain about almost anything except its own ending, and it keeps trying. We push the will to next year and the hard conversation to after the holidays. We speak of our deaths as if they belonged to other people.

The ayah answers every such bargain with one quiet phrase. You can sometimes negotiate the length. You cannot negotiate the end. The wise response is not to win one more delay. It is to make peace with the date before it arrives.

The full entry has 4 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.