Al-Qamar · Makki · ayah 26 of 55

Al-Qamar 54:26

سَيَعْلَمُونَ غَدًا مَّنِ ٱلْكَذَّابُ ٱلْأَشِرُ

“They will know tomorrow who is the insolent liar.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The insult they threw at Salih is handed back with one calm word, tomorrow, when it will be plain whose label it always was.

A reflection

Tomorrow is a time of setting out

In a small harbour at five in the morning, the fishing boats leave in the grey before sunrise. Engines cough, ropes are thrown, lights move out across the water one by one. By the time the sun is up, the harbour is empty. Anyone who wanted to go had to be ready in that short window.

The word ghadan, tomorrow, began in exactly that window. Ghudwa was a precise slot of time: the stretch between the dawn prayer and sunrise. The verb ghadā meant to set out in it, and one lexicon calls that the root's first sense. The morning meal was named after the hour. And ghad, tomorrow, is a worn-down form of the same word. The lexicons record this, and it is established.

So to the first hearers, "tomorrow" carried the feel of an early departure. The moment you set out.

The commentators hear the same in this ayah. One says the Arabs used "tomorrow" for consequences, as they said: with today there is a tomorrow. They quote a poet: death has arrows in it that do not miss; whoever is not dead today will die tomorrow. Another quotes a second poet's lament: before tomorrow, alas for my soul at tomorrow, when my companions set off home and I do not. Tomorrow, here, is the hour of death. A classical theologian adds that the word brings the time near: near in possibility and near in the mind.

So sa-yaʿlamūna ghadan does not mean "one day, far away". It means: at the setting out. When the boats leave and there is no more time to argue on the quay.

Everyone has a ghad, a dawn window in which they set out. The question is not whether it comes. It is what we will discover then, and whether we prepared in the dark beforehand.

Tonight, before sleep, prepare one thing for your own tomorrow: a debt repaid, a prayer made up, an apology sent.

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.