Al-Waqi'ah · Makki · ayah 38 of 96

Al-Waqi'ah 56:38

لِّأَصْحَـٰبِ ٱلْيَمِينِ

“For the companions of the right [who are]”

Saheeh International

Essence

Three words assign everything just described to one group, and the group is not the highest of the three the surah named.

A reflection

All of that was the second rank

A quarryman spends a season on one bed of stone. He learns its grain, where it splits clean, how it weathers. Then the foreman tells him, almost in passing, that this is the lower bed. It goes in behind the render and under the floor. The facing stone, the stuff that will still be sharp in two hundred years, comes out of a different bed higher up the face. He has been working, well and happily, on the backing.

This ayah does something like that to the reader, and most readers walk straight past it.

Everything in the last eleven ayat has been description. Thornless lote trees, fruit heavy on the branch, long shade, water poured. Fruit never cut off or withheld, bedding raised, companions warm and level. Now comes the tag. All of it is for the companions of the right.

The surah opened by sorting humanity into three, not two (56:8-11). Those brought near. The companions of the right. The companions of the left. One early authority quoted in the commentaries states the relation plainly: the companions of the right are a rank below those brought near. The passage you have just read is the second garden described, not the first.

And one commentary notices something precise about this. Of the foremost, Allah said their reward was for what they used to do (56:24). Of the companions of the right, no such clause appears. That commentary reads the omission as deliberate. The companions of the right are brought through by sheer favour. Saying "as a reward" over a pardon would not gladden anybody.

So the honest reading of this ayah is uncomfortable and good for you. You have just finished admiring the backing stone.

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.