Al-Jathiyah · Makki · ayah 34 of 37

Al-Jathiyah 45:34

وَقِيلَ ٱلْيَوْمَ نَنسَىٰكُمْ كَمَا نَسِيتُمْ لِقَآءَ يَوْمِكُمْ هَـٰذَا وَمَأْوَىٰكُمُ ٱلنَّارُ وَمَا لَكُم مِّن نَّـٰصِرِينَ

“And it will be said, "Today We will forget you as you forgot the meeting of this Day of yours, and your refuge is the Fire, and for you there are no helpers.”

Saheeh International

Essence

They left the great meeting lying forgotten like a cup at an old campsite; on that Day they are left in the same way.

A reflection

Does Allah forget?

'Today We forget you.' A careful reader will pause. The Quran itself says, in another place, 'your Lord is never forgetful' (19:64). How can Allah forget anyone?

The commentators answer with one voice. An early authority, quoted by a narration-based commentator, explains nansākum as: We leave you. Several concise commentaries say the same: We leave you in the Fire. One classical commentator offers a second, related sense: We treat you as a forgotten thing, something no one bothers about. Al-Tirmidhī, recording a hadith on this theme, notes that scholars explained 'I forget you' as 'I leave you in the punishment'.

The root helps. The lexicons say that when a desert camp broke up, people called out: look to your ansāʾ. These were the small, cheap things likely to be left behind on the ground: a stick, a cup, a wooden pin. Each was a nisy, a thing dropped and left. The image is established. 'Forgetting' here is leaving behind.

Picture the lost property office at a big railway terminus. Shelves of umbrellas, single gloves, a child's stuffed rabbit, reading glasses, a briefcase. Nobody forgot these in the sense of erasing them from existence. They are all there, labelled and stored. They are simply things no one came back for.

The ayah's 'forgetting' is of that kind, and it mirrors exactly what the people did. They did not erase the Day from their minds; they had been told of it again and again. They simply left it lying, uncollected, as something not worth going back for.

What remains is a sobering symmetry, not a defect in Allah. Nothing is lost to His knowledge. But a person can make himself a thing left behind, by leaving behind the meeting with his Lord.

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.