An-Nazi'at · Makki · ayah 38 of 46

An-Nazi'at 79:38

وَءَاثَرَ ٱلْحَيَوٰةَ ٱلدُّنْيَا

“And preferred the life of the world,”

Saheeh International

Essence

The fault is not in enjoying this near life, but in preferring it: letting its footprints walk ahead of everything else.

A reflection

The near life and the life further on

A bright student is offered two things in the same week. One is a job at a shop in her hometown, starting Monday, with friends nearby and her mother's cooking. The other is a training place three hundred miles away that could shape her whole career, starting in September. The first is close, easy and certain. The second is far, harder and slower. She takes the first. Ten years on, she still thinks about the second.

The first hearers heard that choice in the word dunyā. The root d-n-w means coming near. Dunyā is the feminine of adnā, nearer, and the world is named for its nearness. The nearest sky is al-samāʾ al-dunyā. At Mina, the first pillar the pilgrims stone is al-jamra al-dunyā, the one nearest the camp. So al-ḥayāt al-dunyā is 'the near life': the one right in front of us, before the one still coming. That image is established.

Nearness is not a fault. The near life is real, and it is given by Allah. But nearness has a pull. What is close always looks larger than what is far, the way a hand held up to your face can hide a mountain.

The Quran names this exact pull elsewhere, with the same verb as this ayah. 'But you prefer the life of this world, while the Hereafter is better and more lasting' (87:16–17). The problem is not seeing the near life. It is letting its closeness decide everything.

The narration-based commentator explains the one described here as someone who put this life before his religion and his Hereafter. The near hand hid the mountain.

The remedy is not to despise the near. It is to lower the hand. Hold this life at its proper distance, and the Hereafter comes back into view at its true size.

This week, before one significant choice, ask which option is simply nearer, and which is actually better and more lasting.

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.