An-Naba · Makki · ayah 4 of 40

An-Naba 78:4

كَلَّا سَيَعْلَمُونَ

“No! They are going to know.”

Saheeh International

Essence

One word stops the scoffing, and three more promise that the endless asking will soon give way to plain, unmissable knowing.

A reflection

One word that stops the talk

In a draughty church hall, a ballet teacher walks along the line of ten-year-olds at the barre. She stops behind one girl and taps her stick on the floor. 'No.' Just the one word. Then she steps closer and moves the girl's elbow an inch higher, and waits while the girl tries again.

Kallā is a word like that tap. The sources describe it as a word made for turning back something that has just been said. Its plainest sense is: it is not as they say. Here it answers the whole circle of scoffing in the first three ayat. The great news is not false, and it will not fail to come. Some scholars read kallā differently, as 'truly', but most take it as a rebuff, a sharp stop.

One concise commentary gives it a single word: radʿ, a deterrent. It is the word you use to pull someone back from the edge of something. It is not an insult and it is not a sneer. It interrupts a line of talk before it goes any further.

What happens after the tap matters as much as the tap. The ballet teacher does not walk away. She shows. The surah does the same. After this firm 'No', it does not lecture or rage. It turns patiently to evidence: the earth spread out, the mountains, sleep, night and day (78:6–16). The rebuff clears the ground; the evidence builds on it.

One classical commentator even allows that kallā here carries a quiet promise alongside the warning. Stop, and you will come to know the good that comes from stopping. He notes that the warning is the more obvious sense in passages like this. But the possibility is there, like a door left ajar.

Most of us dislike being told 'No'. We hear it as rejection. Yet some of the kindest moments in a life begin with that word. A teacher, a parent or a friend refuses to let us carry on down a wrong line. The question is whether we can hear kallā as that tap on the floor, and let someone move the elbow.

The full entry has 4 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.