Al-Mursalat · Makki · ayah 29 of 50

Al-Mursalat 77:29

ٱنطَلِقُوٓا۟ إِلَىٰ مَا كُنتُم بِهِۦ تُكَذِّبُونَ

“[They will be told], "Proceed to that which you used to deny.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The word normally used to set someone free is turned around: "go" now means walking, under your own power, straight at the very thing you spent a lifetime calling impossible.

A reflection

The word for a camel let off her tether

The verb here comes from a root whose everyday picture is a she-camel loosed from her hobble, free now to walk off and graze wherever she chooses. The same root gives the cheerful man a 'released' face, no longer frowning, and names the moment a scorpion's sting finally lets its victim go. Every ordinary use of this word means relief: a binding undone, a restriction lifted.

That is precisely what makes its use here so unsettling. "Go" is the word of release, spoken over people who are being released into nothing good at all. There is no hobble being removed for their comfort; there is a command to walk, under their own power, toward the one place freedom was never going to lead.

A word usually heard as mercy is not changed here — it is simply placed where mercy cannot reach it. The grammar of relief stays exactly the same; only the direction has turned. That is a harder thing to sit with than a plain threat would be, because a plain threat announces itself. This one arrives wearing the sound of good news, and the listener only understands, a beat too late, which way they are actually being released.

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.