Qaf · Makki · ayah 42 of 45

Qaf 50:42

يَوْمَ يَسْمَعُونَ ٱلصَّيْحَةَ بِٱلْحَقِّ ۚ ذَٰلِكَ يَوْمُ ٱلْخُرُوجِ

“The Day they will hear the blast [of the Horn] in truth. That is the Day of Emergence [from the graves].”

Saheeh International

Essence

One blast, carrying the truth they argued with, reaches every ear at once; the Day it sounds is named for what it does.

A reflection

One shout, at the full stretch of a voice

The lexicons place the root of ṣayḥa at the raised voice, the loud one. Another lexicon makes it the sound of anything once it has grown strong. To ṣāḥa is to use a voice at the full stretch of its capacity. The form ṣayḥa names a single instance: one cry, not crying.

The Arabs then stretched the word in two directions at once. It named disaster. To say there was a ṣīḥa in a family's house was to say they had perished. It named the raid that takes a tribe by surprise, and the cry from a house of mourning.

Yet it also named growth. A tree ṣāḥa when it shot up, as though its height announced itself. A bunch of dates ṣāḥa when it came clear of its sheath and lengthened while still green.

The Quran uses only this one noun from the root, thirteen times, and never a verb. No one in the Quran is described as shouting it. In most places the ṣayḥa seizes those who had wronged, a town ended by one blast (11:67). Five times it is counted aloud, and the count is always one (36:29). Here, once, it is the sound of the Last Day.

So the word holds both its old meanings at the same moment. For a people who denied, the blast is ruin, as it was for the towns before them. For the believer it is the date bunch coming clear of its sheath. One sound, and what it means depends on who hears it. The same blast that ends a life of denial begins a life that will not end. Which of the two it will be is being settled now, in how we live.

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.