Ar-Rahman · Madani · ayah 36 of 78

Ar-Rahman 55:36

فَبِأَىِّ ءَالَآءِ رَبِّكُمَا تُكَذِّبَانِ

“So which of the favors of your Lord would you deny?”

Saheeh International

Essence

Straight after the flame and the smoke, the refrain names 'your Lord' and 'favours', so that fear is never left standing alone in the surah.

A reflection

Not a taunt to the damned: a plea to the living

Some readers hear this refrain, placed right after the flame of fire and the smoke, as almost cruel. It sounds like mockery. The fire is coming, and then: so, which of your Lord's favours will you deny? As if the question were being shouted at people already burning.

That reading gets the time of the sentence wrong.

Look at the verbs. The fire will be sent, yursalu: an event ahead. The refrain asks which favours you deny, tukadhdhibān: something you are doing now. The fire is described in the future. The question is asked in the present.

So the refrain is not addressed to anyone in the fire. It is addressed to listeners who can still change what they are doing. The fire is the picture; the refrain is the appeal.

One later commentary states the favour plainly. The threat, it says, is a kindness. And the sorting of the obedient from the disobedient by their recompense is counted among the favours.

Think of the difference between two voices saying the same words. A man standing over someone who has fallen through the ice, saying: I told you so. And a man on the bank before anyone has stepped on it, saying: the ice is thin there; it will not hold you. The words might be identical. The time is everything.

This refrain is the second voice. It comes while you are still on the bank.

That also changes how to hear it. Not as a sneer to resent, but as a hand on the arm. Which of your Lord's favours will you deny? Among them, this one: being told about the ice before you reached it.

The damned are not being mocked here. The living are being pleaded with, by name, by their Lord.

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.