An-Najm · Makki · ayah 40 of 62

An-Najm 53:40

وَأَنَّ سَعْيَهُۥ سَوْفَ يُرَىٰ

“And that his effort is going to be seen -”

Saheeh International

Essence

Nothing you strove for vanishes into the dark: a day is coming when it will be brought out and shown, to you and before everyone.

A reflection

Shown, displayed, seen

Yurā is a passive verb: 'it will be seen'. The ayah does not say by whom, and the commentaries hear several layers in that silence.

One explains the verb as 'it will be presented to him and laid open before him', from araytuhu al-shayʾ, 'I showed him the thing'. Another adds that it will be shown in his record and on his scale. A third, quoted in one commentary, says it will be seen by everyone present at the Resurrection, so that they look upon it. And another reading connects it with the ayah: 'Work, for Allah will see your work, and His Messenger and the believers' (9:105).

So the striving of a human being has three audiences on that Day. The one who did it, finally seeing his own life laid out in full. All of creation, before whom it is displayed. And above all, the One who saw it from the beginning.

Then there is sawfa, 'in time', 'it shall be'. Not yet. Today, most of our striving goes unrecorded by human eyes. Hours at a sickbed, prayers in the dark, patience no one noticed. Sawfa is a promise with a delay built in.

One modern commentary adds the result of that showing: the good in it will be distinguished from the bad, as an honour for the one who did well and a reproach for the one who did wrong.

This turns a single short ayah into a whole way of living. If everything I strive for will one day be shown, then I am already, in a sense, working in front of an audience. Not the audience of social media, fickle and distracted. An audience that sees completely, and that will one day show me, too, what I really did.

The question becomes: when my striving is laid open, what would I like to see there?

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.