Az-Zumar · Makki · ayah 56 of 75

Az-Zumar 39:56

أَن تَقُولَ نَفْسٌ يَـٰحَسْرَتَىٰ عَلَىٰ مَا فَرَّطتُ فِى جَنۢبِ ٱللَّهِ وَإِن كُنتُ لَمِنَ ٱلسَّـٰخِرِينَ

“Lest a soul should say,[1355] "Oh, [how great is] my regret over what I neglected in regard to Allāh and that I was among the mockers."”

Saheeh International

Essence

The Quran quotes in advance the cry of a soul that let slip what it owed Allah, so nobody need ever say it.

A reflection

A sentence written so you never have to say it

The ayah begins with an taqūla nafsun: lest a soul should say. It is linked to the commands just before it. Turn back, submit, follow the best, one commentary explains, out of dislike that a soul should come to say this. Another early commentator reads it simply: so that no soul says it.

In other words, the Quran is quoting a sentence from the future. It writes down, word for word, what a regretful soul will cry out on the Day. And it does so precisely so that the reader never has to say it.

Picture a maths teacher in February, four months before the final exams. She knows the comment she hates writing most on a June report: could have passed with more effort. So in February she writes it on a sticky note and puts one on every desk. Under it she writes: this is the sentence I do not want to write about you. Several students keep the note inside their pencil cases until June.

That is exactly the strategy of this ayah. It does not wait for failure to explain failure. It shows you the final sentence while there is still time to make it untrue.

The commentaries note that 'a soul' is left indefinite. Some read it as many souls; others as one soul among them. Either way, the reader cannot assume it is someone else. Any soul could be the one who says it.

The kindest warnings are the ones that come early and specifically. This one is both. It names the words, the regret and the reason. All that remains is for the reader to live so that those words never become theirs.

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.