An-Najm · Makki · ayah 60 of 62

An-Najm 53:60

وَتَضْحَكُونَ وَلَا تَبْكُونَ

“And you laugh and do not weep”

Saheeh International

Essence

He gave you laughter and tears; hearing His warning, you used the laughter and withheld the tears.

A reflection

The gifts, used the wrong way round

Seventeen ayat earlier, this surah said: wa-annahu huwa aḍḥaka wa-abkā, and that it is He who made laugh and made weep (53:43). Now it turns to its listeners and says: wa-taḍḥakūna wa-lā tabkūn, and you laugh, and you do not weep.

The same two verbs. The first time, they describe Allah's gifts: He placed laughter and tears in human beings. The second time, they describe what the listeners did with those gifts. They took the laughter and aimed it at His message. They held the tears back from the one place that deserved them.

Picture a child given two tools by his father, a paintbrush and a hammer. He uses the hammer on the canvas and paints the nails. Both tools are good. He has simply turned them round.

The commentators describe exactly this misuse. You laugh, they say, in mockery of the Quran. And you do not weep, when weeping and humility were your due. One classical commentator put it sharply. It was your right, he wrote, to weep at it. Instead you abandoned that and did its opposite.

There is a quiet reproach in the echo. The surah reminded its listeners that their laughter and tears were not their own creation. Allah made them laugh; Allah made them weep. To turn His gift of laughter against His own words was not cleverness. It was ingratitude, disguised as wit.

That is worth noticing in ourselves. Most of us do not mock the Quran. But we can still use our laughter and tears the wrong way round. We weep easily at a lost match or a cancelled holiday. We laugh lightly at things that should sober us: a friend's growing cruelty, our own neglected prayers, a warning we have heard many times.

The surah holds the two ayat side by side, like a mirror held up to a mirror. He gave you laughter and tears. Where are you spending each?

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.