Al-Qiyamah · Makki · ayah 22 of 40

Al-Qiyamah 75:22

وُجُوهٌ يَوْمَئِذٍ نَّاضِرَةٌ

“[Some] faces, that Day, will be radiant,”

Saheeh International

Essence

On that Day some faces will shine like a tree in new leaf, because what was inside them has finally reached the surface.

A reflection

Not a halo: a tree in new leaf

Most of us carry a ready picture for 'radiant faces'. Something like a soft glow painted round a head, or a pleasant, polite smile. It is a nice image, and a thin one.

The Arabic word is nāḍira, and it began in the orchard. The Arabs said a tree or its leaves naḍura when they turned fresh, green and glistening. Pure gold was called naḍār. One early lexicographer adds that any colour with a gleam in it is nāḍir: a shining green, a shining red. So naḍra is beauty with life and moisture in it, the look of something well watered.

The commentators reach for many words to explain it: beautiful, joyful, at ease, lit up, bright with blessing. One of them notes that their wording differs while the meaning is one. Another gathers it into a sentence. Allah completed their outward beauty with this freshness, and their inward beauty with the sight of Him in the next ayah.

That is the difference from a halo. A halo is added from outside. A leaf turns green because water has reached it from the root.

An older woman comes home from Hajj. She is sunburnt, thinner, and her feet are still bandaged. Yet relative after relative tells her she looks ten years younger. Nobody can say exactly why. Something has happened inside her, and the face has simply reported it.

One commentator adds that 'face' here stands for the whole person. The ayah is not describing a complexion. It is describing people who have arrived, seen from the front.

So the radiance of that Day is not cosmetic. It is the visible end of a long inward story: years of turning towards Allah, finally showing on the surface. The tree does not paint its leaves. It drinks.

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.