Nuh · Makki · ayah 7 of 28

Nuh 71:7

وَإِنِّى كُلَّمَا دَعَوْتُهُمْ لِتَغْفِرَ لَهُمْ جَعَلُوٓا۟ أَصَـٰبِعَهُمْ فِىٓ ءَاذَانِهِمْ وَٱسْتَغْشَوْا۟ ثِيَابَهُمْ وَأَصَرُّوا۟ وَٱسْتَكْبَرُوا۟ ٱسْتِكْبَارًا

“And indeed, every time I invited them that You may forgive them, they put their fingers in their ears, covered themselves with their garments,[1761] persisted, and were arrogant with [great] arrogance.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Every invitation toward their own forgiveness was met with fingers in ears, faces covered, and a refusal that hardened rather than softened.

A reflection

Avoidance can be loud enough to stage

What makes this ayah striking is how physical the refusal is. These are not people who simply disagreed in their hearts and moved on. They staged their rejection with their bodies: fingers pushed into ears, cloth pulled over faces, a performance of not-hearing deliberate enough to require effort.

There is a modern equivalent most people recognise from their own life, usually aimed at themselves. A man checks his phone the instant his brother starts talking about their father's will, every single time, for years, so that the conversation never quite gets said in full. The checking is not about the phone. It is the fingers in the ears, updated for a pocket rather than a hand.

The sources note two possible reasons behind the covering of faces here: so as not to hear him at all, and so as not to be recognised by him, so that their refusal would not even have a face attached to it that Nuh could later call back to and name directly. Both readings point to the same underlying fact: real effort was spent making sure the truth could not land, rather than simply waiting passively for it to pass.

This is worth noticing in yourself before it is ever noticed in anyone else. The topic you reliably change. The message you leave unread for three days so you can claim you hadn't seen it. The relative whose calls you let ring out because you already know what they will say. None of these require fingers in ears. They are the same avoidance, simply wearing better clothes, costing real effort to maintain rather than arriving by accident.

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.