An-Nazi'at · Makki · ayah 9 of 46

An-Nazi'at 79:9

أَبْصَـٰرُهَا خَـٰشِعَةٌ

“Their eyes[1839] humbled.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Every gaze will be lowered one day; the only choice is whether it is lowered now in humility or then in shame.

A reflection

Earth lying low, waiting for rain

In a hot August with a hosepipe ban, a suburban lawn turns the colour of straw. It lies flat and cracked, and nothing the owner does will green it. Then one night the rain comes. Within a week the grass is standing up again, as if it had only been waiting.

The first hearers had a word for that flat, waiting ground: khāshiʿ. The root kh-sh-ʿ is sinking low and settling. The lexicons describe a low hillock pressed flat against the ground. A camel's hump that has wasted away and sunk. A ruined wall slumped level with the earth. Stars dipping towards setting. And above all, land that has had no rain: dusty, bare, lying still under the sky. That image is established.

The Quran uses exactly that picture of the earth. 'Among His signs is that you see the earth khāshiʿa; then when We send down water on it, it stirs and swells' (41:39). The lowness is not the end of the story. It is readiness.

Now read this ayah again. Abṣāruhā khāshiʿa: their eyes are lowered, sunk, brought low. The sources explain that these are the eyes of the deniers, humbled by the terror of what they see. Another ayah describes them 'looking with a furtive glance' (42:45). The same word that describes the waiting earth describes eyes that can no longer lift themselves.

The difference is what comes next. The dry earth lies low, and rain follows. The eyes on that Day lie low, and there is no rain for them. Their lowness comes too late to be readiness. It is only defeat.

That is the quiet invitation in the image. Every one of us will be brought low at some point. The question is when, and in what spirit. Lowered now, before Allah, like dry ground turned up to the sky, and it becomes the place His mercy lands. Lowered only on that Day, and it is simply the end of pride.

The lawn did not make the rain. It only lay open to it. That is all khushūʿ asks of us.

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.