An-Nazi'at · Makki · ayah 46 of 46

An-Nazi'at 79:46

كَأَنَّهُمْ يَوْمَ يَرَوْنَهَا لَمْ يَلْبَثُوٓا۟ إِلَّا عَشِيَّةً أَوْ ضُحَىٰهَا

“It will be, on the Day they see it,[1851] as though they had not remained [in the world] except for an afternoon or a morning thereof.”

Saheeh International

Essence

When the Hour is seen, a whole lifetime will feel like one afternoon, or the morning before it, so today is not a small thing.

A reflection

'It feels like last Tuesday'

A young woman finds an old photograph album in her grandmother's cupboard. On the first page is her grandmother's wedding, sixty-two years ago: a thin bride in a borrowed dress. She shows it to her grandmother, who looks at it for a long moment. 'It feels like last Tuesday,' she says. Sixty-two years, eleven grandchildren, three houses and a husband buried, and it feels like last Tuesday.

The verb in this ayah catches that feeling. Lam yalbathū: they did not stay. The root l-b-th is staying put: stopping in a place and holding to it, lingering, tarrying. An old man lagging behind the young tarries. The lexicons picture a traveller who stops and stays on, and whose stay only shows its length at the end. That image is established.

On the Day they see the Hour, the sources say, those who rise will think their whole worldly life lasted an afternoon. Or the morning of that same day. One early authority described it simply as the time of this world in people's eyes once they have seen the Hereafter.

The second word in the ayah adds to the picture. ʿAshiyya, from a root of dusk and dimness, is the fading end of the day, from the sun's decline towards night. It is the time when shadows lengthen and the light starts to go. A whole life, looked back on from the Hour, will seem like one of those late afternoons: warm, full, and suddenly over.

The grandmother is not wrong. Everyone who has lived long enough says the same. The years feel endless while you are in them and brief once they are behind you. The Quran says that feeling is not an illusion. It is a glimpse of how things will look from the other side.

If sixty years will feel like an afternoon, then this afternoon is precious. What will you do with the rest of it?

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.