Al-Ghashiyah · Makki · ayah 3 of 26

Al-Ghashiyah 88:3

عَامِلَةٌ نَّاصِبَةٌ

“Working [hard] and exhausted.[1910]”

Saheeh International

Essence

Everyone will stand, labour and grow tired; the only choice is whether that weariness is given to Allah now or imposed on the Day.

A reflection

The standing they refused, the standing they get

Nāṣiba comes from a root that pictures something set up straight. A spear planted upright in the ground. A stone raised as a waymark in the desert. From that picture came the word for toil, naṣab. The classical lexicons agree on the link: a person keeps standing at a task until he is worn out.

Put that beside the first word, ʿāmila, working, and you have faces that labour and are exhausted by it. The commentators ask where the labour happens. The answer most of them give is: on that Day. The oldest of the great commentaries says so, and adds that the people of interpretation said the same. The early explanations fill in the scene. Dragging heavy chains. Wading through the Fire the way camels wade through mud, sinking and heaving free. Climbing slopes of fire and sliding down them. Standing barefoot through a Day the Quran measures at fifty thousand years (70:4).

Then one early scholar turns the picture round, in words that four classical commentaries preserve in one wording or another. They did not work for Allah in the world, he says, so He set them to work in the Fire. Humility, work and weariness were meant to be found in them here, for Allah. Since they were not, they were imposed on them on the Day of Resurrection. Another early voice, recorded beside him, is blunter: they were too proud to obey Allah in the world.

So nobody escapes naṣab. Everyone will stand, labour and grow tired. The only choice is where, and for whom. A believer's standing is described with the very same root. 'So when you are free, rise and toil (fa-nṣab), and to your Lord turn your longing' (94:7–8). That standing is chosen. It is short. And it ends in rest.

It is also counted. Sahih al-Bukhari records the Prophet ﷺ saying that no naṣab touches a Muslim without Allah wiping away some of his sins by it. The same holds for illness, worry, grief, hurt and distress, even a thorn that pricks him. It is the very word of this ayah. One weariness is imposed and returns nothing. The other is accepted and pays back.

There is a strange relief in seeing it this way. Your aching legs in the night prayer are not an extra burden laid on top of life. They are weariness counted for you instead of against you. The other kind is coming for everyone who refuses this kind.

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.