Al-Waqi'ah · Makki · ayah 84 of 96

Al-Waqi'ah 56:84

وَأَنتُمْ حِينَئِذٍ تَنظُرُونَ

“And you are at that time looking on -”

Saheeh International

Essence

Three words put a room full of people into the scene, and the verb for what they are doing is looking, not seeing.

A reflection

Three readings of what they are looking at

In a court gallery you can see everything and say nothing. That is the definition of a gallery. The arrangement is not cruel; it is what a gallery is for.

Most readers take this ayah as a description of grief: you are standing there watching, heartbroken. The commentaries give three readings and only one of them is about feeling.

The first: you are looking at My command and My authority, and you cannot push it back or possess anything of it. On that reading the object is not the man in the bed at all. It is the proceeding.

The second: you are looking at the dying man and able to do nothing for him. That is the reading most translations imply.

The third is reported from an early authority and is the most physical. It means those of the dead man's family who are present, watching for when his soul will come out.

Those are three different pictures. In the first you are an observer of an act. In the second you are a helpless relative. In the third you are, quite precisely, waiting.

And the third is the one nobody says out loud about their own experience. Anyone who has sat long enough with somebody dying knows that the hours produce something other than pure sorrow. They produce watching. The breathing is counted. The gaps are noticed.

The Qur'an is not accusing anybody of coldness by saying so. It is describing the room accurately, which is what makes the next ayah possible.

Because a room full of people who are watching is a room full of people who have correctly understood that there is nothing to do.

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.