Al-Mursalat · Makki · ayah 24 of 50

Al-Mursalat 77:24

وَيْلٌ يَوْمَئِذٍ لِّلْمُكَذِّبِينَ

“Woe, that Day, to the deniers.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The same sentence returns a third time, now charging the denial of a measure so careful it was spent on every single person reading it.

A reflection

The hardest denial to make honestly

The fuller treatment at 77:15 explains why this sentence returns repeatedly: each fresh thing denied earns its own separate charge, an itemised account rather than one vague verdict. Here it follows immediately after the stages of a person's own making, an unremarkable fluid, a secure resting place, a precisely known term, measured by One who then names His own excellence at it (77:20–23).

Of all the charges this surah brings, this may be the hardest one to deny with a straight face, because the evidence sits inside the very body doing the denying. Denying ruined cities requires ignoring something at a distance; denying careful measure in your own making requires ignoring the plain fact of your own existence as its result. This repetition is placed precisely where denial is least excusable and most quietly common anyway.

The full entry has 2 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.