An-Nazi'at · Makki · ayah 11 of 46

An-Nazi'at 79:11

أَءِذَا كُنَّا عِظَـٰمًا نَّخِرَةً

“Even if we should be decayed bones?"[1840]”

Saheeh International

Essence

The deniers chose the most hopeless picture they could find, bones so hollow the wind whistles through them, and it was no obstacle at all.

A reflection

Bones the wind whistles through

On a windy afternoon in an old wood, walkers sometimes hear a low moan with no obvious source. It comes from a dead tree, its trunk rotted hollow, with the wind passing through a split in the bark. It sounds almost like breathing. Touch the wood and it crumbles in your hand.

The first hearers had a word for exactly that. The root n-kh-r is a sound first: the snort of breath forced through the nose. That is why the Arabs called the nostrils manākhir. A tree or a bone that had decayed went hollow, and the wind entering it made that same snorting sound. So nakhir came to mean rotten, crumbling at a touch. That image is established in the lexicons.

The canonical readings preserve two forms of the word, and the sources hold both. Most readers recite nakhira: bones decayed and crumbling. Others recite nākhira: bones hollow and whistling in the wind. One early authority explained it as the bone once it has decayed and the wind has entered it. One view treats the two as the same in meaning. Another sees a difference: fully crumbled on one reading, still hollow and sounding on the other.

The Quran's many readings are not a problem to be solved. Here they are a gift. Together they give a complete picture. The bones are so far gone that they crumble when touched, and so empty that the wind plays through them.

Now notice who chose this image. It is the deniers. They reached for the most hopeless material they could imagine. Not a sleeping body, not a fresh grave, but bones that the desert wind has hollowed out and set whistling. Their argument was: surely not even Allah can do anything with this.

The surah lets them make their case in full. It quotes their best image in their own words. Then, two ayat later, it answers with four words: 'It will be but a single shout' (79:13).

The hardest case they could think of was not hard at all. Sometimes the most hopeless picture in our own lives is exactly where His power is waiting to be seen.

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.