Al-Mulk · Makki · ayah 25 of 30

Al-Mulk 67:25

وَيَقُولُونَ مَتَىٰ هَـٰذَا ٱلْوَعْدُ إِن كُنتُمْ صَـٰدِقِينَ

“And they say, "When is this promise, if you should be truthful?"”

Saheeh International

Essence

The one question the deniers get to ask in this whole stretch is a demand for a date, and it is aimed at the believers.

A reflection

This is not rudeness, it is a technique

Read quickly, this is simply mockery. Unbelievers being obtuse, and a reader passes over it as noise between two serious lines.

Two details in the commentaries make it something much more deliberate.

The first is who is being asked. One commentary states that they said it to the believers. Another spells it out: you, Muhammad, and your companions. The verb at the end is plural. The commentaries read it as taking in the ordinary believers, since they shared in the promise and in reciting the verses that carried it. So the question was not fired only at the one man who could answer. It was fired at everyone standing with him.

The second is the purpose. One commentary records two readings of why they asked. Perhaps in mockery. And perhaps, it adds, to make it look doubtful to the weaker ones, suggesting that since nothing had come quickly, there was nothing in it.

That is a tactic, and a good one. Ask the unanswerable question in front of the people with the least to hold on to.

In a sailmaking loft, the apprentice is the one asked, in front of everybody, exactly which day the suit will be finished. The man asking knows the answer depends on the cloth, the weather and two other jobs. He is not after information. He is after the three seconds in which a nineteen-year-old discovers in public that he cannot say.

And the Arabic word they use for truthfulness has a spear under it. A shaft that was sound was called by this root, and truth takes the same word for its strength, because a lie has none. What they were demanding was a test of the shaft, in front of an audience, by a method they had chosen.

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.