Al-Infitar · Makki · ayah 16 of 19

Al-Infitar 82:16

وَمَا هُمْ عَنْهَا بِغَآئِبِينَ

“And never therefrom will they be absent.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Those who treated the unseen as if it were absent will find that they can never be absent from what they denied.

A reflection

Hidden is not the same as gone

The families of submarine crews live with a strange kind of absence. For months at a time the boat is somewhere under the ocean. It sends no messages, and it cannot be seen or tracked by those who love the crew. Yet no wife or child imagines it has ceased to exist. It is hidden, not gone.

The root of ghāʾibīn is exactly that difference. The Arabs said ghābat al-shams: the sun has set. It has gone where the eye cannot follow, but it has not ended. A thicket was a ghāba, because whatever is in it is hidden. The dark bottom of a well, where Yūsuf (as) was thrown, was its ghayāba (12:10). Roots buried in the earth were ghaybān. From the same root comes al-ghayb, the unseen: all that is beyond the senses, known only through revelation.

Now read the ayah with that in mind. Wa-mā hum ʿanhā bi-ghāʾibīn: and they will not be absent from it. The early explanations take it plainly. They will not leave it, not for a single hour. It will not be lightened for them, and they will not be granted death or rest.

There is a sharp irony in the word. The people this passage describes denied the unseen Day, because they could not see it. They treated the hidden as if it were absent. Now they cannot be absent from what they denied.

Most of us are tempted by the same mistake in smaller ways. We treat what we cannot see as if it were not there. The consequence not yet arrived. The reckoning not yet visible. The Lord who is not seen with the eyes.

Faith in the ghayb is not believing in nothing. It is trusting that the sun is still burning after it sets, because the One who sees it has told us. It is the submarine family's certainty, extended to the whole of the unseen.

The ayah asks us to learn that lesson while the unseen is still unseen. Those who wait to believe until it becomes visible will find, as this ayah says, that it is then too late to look away.

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.