An-Najm · Makki · ayah 59 of 62

An-Najm 53:59

أَفَمِنْ هَـٰذَا ٱلْحَدِيثِ تَعْجَبُونَ

“Then at this statement do you wonder?”

Saheeh International

Essence

Wonder at the Quran is not neutral: it opened into faith for the jinn, and closed into mockery for those addressed here.

A reflection

The same wonder, two endings

Two friends stand on a hillside at midnight as a meteor shower crosses the sky. One goes completely quiet. After a while he says, almost to himself, subḥān Allāh. The other is filming, laughing, already composing the caption. Both are amazed. Their amazement goes in opposite directions.

A-fa-min hādhā al-ḥadīthi taʿjabūn: is it at this discourse that you marvel? The commentators explain the marvelling here as wonder that ends in denial. They wondered, one says, by way of rejecting it. Another: they marvelled that it could be true. A third: that it could be from Allah.

There is another wonder in the Quran, using the same root, that ended very differently. A company of jinn heard the Prophet ﷺ reciting and went back to their people. 'We have heard a wondrous recitation, qurʾānan ʿajabā, which guides to the right way, so we believed in it' (72:1-2). The same astonishment. In them it opened into faith.

So wonder is not neutral. It is a door, and it swings one of two ways. Either it turns into curiosity, humility and belief, or it turns into disbelief that protects itself with a laugh. The next ayah in this surah describes exactly that turn: 'and you laugh, and do not weep'.

One lexicon gives a striking definition of wonder: a state that comes over someone who does not know the cause of a thing. That is why, it notes, wonder in this sense is never ascribed to Allah, who knows every hidden cause. Wonder is a sign of what we do not yet know. The question is whether we go looking.

The two friends on the hillside both met something they could not fully explain. One followed the wonder upward. One turned it into content. The ayah asks every reader the same question about the Quran: when it amazes you, where does the amazement go?

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.