Al-Qiyamah · Makki · ayah 34 of 40

Al-Qiyamah 75:34

أَوْلَىٰ لَكَ فَأَوْلَىٰ

“Woe to you, and woe!”

Saheeh International

Essence

It has come near you, and nearer: the nearness he turned his back on now faces him, as a warning said to his face.

A reflection

Not a curse, but the sound of a near miss

A cricket ball fizzes past a batsman's helmet, a hair's breadth from his face. The commentators say it together: 'That was close.' Nobody calls it a curse. It is a description of how near something came.

Most English translations render this ayah 'Woe to you, and woe'. That is fair as far as it goes. But the English word tends to carry a picture of rage: a voice raised, a fist shaken, an angry God losing patience. The Arabic has a different picture inside it.

Awlā comes from the root w-l-y, nearness: two things side by side with nothing between them. One early authority on Arabic took it this way, and a later master said no one had explained it better. Awlā laka means that what will destroy you has come right up to you. It has drawn level. Another grammarian recorded an everyday use of the phrase. The Arabs said awlā laka to someone who had nearly perished and then escaped.

Other readings are recorded too. Some took it to mean 'you are more deserving of this'. One proposed it was a name for 'woe' itself, with the letters turned round, though others found that unconvincing. Sahih al-Bukhari, in its chapter on this surah, glosses the phrase in a single word: a threat.

Put the strongest of these together, and the phrase sounds less like a curse and more like a shout across a gap. It has come near you. It is close. You are standing where the ball passes.

That changes how the ayah should land on a reader. A curse closes a door. A warning of nearness holds it open a moment longer. You only tell someone 'that was close' while they are still standing.

This matters because the word was said to a living man, who would walk away from it and keep his choices for years. The ayah was not yet his sentence. It was the sound of the ball going past.

The question for us is what we do with that sound. Some people hear it and step back from the crease. Some adjust their helmet and grin.

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.