Surah Ar-Rahman 55:26-45 - Towards Understanding the Quran - Quran Translation Commentary

Translation

(55:26) All²⁵ that is on earth will perish,

(55:27) only the Person of your Lord, full of majesty and splendour, will endure.

(55:28) So which of the wonders of your Lord will you twain – you men and jinn – then deny?²⁶

(55:29) All in the heavens and the earth entreat Him for their needs; a new, mighty task engages Him each day.²⁷

(55:30) Which of your Lord's laudable attributes will you twain – you men and jinn – then deny?²⁸

(55:31) O you twain, who are a burden (on the earth),²⁹ We shall attend to you and call you to account.³⁰

(55:32) (We shall then see), which of the favours of your Lord will you twain – you men and jinn – then deny?³¹

(55:33) O company of jinn and men, if you have the power to go beyond the bounds of the heavens and the earth, go beyond them! Yet you will be unable to go beyond them for that requires infinite power.³²

(55:34) Which of your Lord's powers will you twain – you men and jinn – then deny?

(55:35) (If you so venture) a flame of fire and smoke³³ shall be lashed at you, which you shall be unable to withstand.

(55:36) Which of your Lord's powers will you twain – you men and jinn – then deny?

(55:37) (What will happen) when the heaven will be split asunder and will become crimson like leather?³⁴

(55:38) Which of your Lord's powers will you twain – you men and jinn – then deny?³⁵

(55:39) On that Day there will be no need to ask either men or jinn about their sins.³⁶

(55:40) (We shall see) which of the favours of your Lord will you twain – you men and jinn – then deny?³⁷

(55:41) The culprits shall be known by their marks, and shall be seized by their forelocks and their feet.

(55:42) Which of the powers of your Lord, will you twain – you men and jinn – then deny?

(55:43) (It will be said): “This is the Hell that the culprits had cried lies to.

(55:44) They will keep circling around between Hell and boiling water.³⁸

(55:45) Which of your Lord's powers will you twain – you men and jinn – then deny?³⁹

Commentary

25. From here to verse 30, the jinn and the men have been informed of two realities:

First, neither you are immortal nor the provisions that you are enjoying in this world everlasting. Immortal and everlasting is the Being of the High and Supreme God alone Whose greatness this universe testifies, and by Whose grace and kindness you have been favored with these bounties. Now, if some one among you behaves arrogantly, it would be due to his own meanness. If a foolish person assumes haughtiness in his tiny sphere of authority, or becomes god of a few helpless men who fall into his hand, this farce would not last long. A godhead that lags for a mere score or two score years in a corner of the earth whose size in this limitless universe is not even equal to a pea seed, and then becomes a legend of the past, is not something of which one may feel proud and arrogant.

The other important truth of which both these creations have been warned is: None of those whom you have set up as deities and removers of hardships and fulfiller of needs, apart from Allah, whether they are angels or prophets or the moon and the sun, or some other creation, can fulfill any of your needs. These helpless creatures and things themselves stand in need of Allah’s help for their needs and requirements. They themselves pray to Him for help. When they are not able to remove their own hardships, how will they remove your hardships? Whatever is happening in this limitless universe, from the earth to the heavens, is happening under the command of One God alone. No one else has any share in His Godhead. No one therefore can influence anyone else’s destiny in any way.

26. Here, as the context itself shows, the word alaa has been used in the sense of excellences and perfections. Whoever of the mortal creatures is involved in vanity and self-arrogance and struts about thinking that his false godhead is everlasting, disavows Lord of the world’s glory and majesty by his conduct, if not by his tongue. His pride and arrogance by itself is a denial of Allah Almighty’s greatness and glory. Whatever claim he may make to an excellence by his tongue, or arrogate to himself such an excellence, it is indeed a disavowal of the rank and station of the real possessor of excellences and perfections.

27. That is, He is continuously and endlessly functioning in this universe and creating countless new things with new and yet new forms and designs and qualities, He is giving death to one and life to another, exalting one and debasing another, causing one to recover and another to remain ill, rescuing a drowning one and drowning a floating one. He is providing sustenance to countless creatures in a variety of ways, His world never stays in the same state: it is changing every moment and its Creator arranges it in a new state and fashion every time, which is different from every previous form and fashion and state.

28. Here, alaa seems to have been used in the sense of qualities and glories. Every person who commits polytheism of any kind, in fact, disavows one or the other of Allah’s attributes, A person’s saying that such and such a saint has removed his disease, in fact, amounts to saying that Allah is not the Remover of disease and Restorer of health but the saint, Another one’s saying that such and such a holy one has gotten him a job, in fact, amounts to saying that Allah is not the Sustainer and Lord but the particular holy person is his lord. Still another one’s saying that his prayer has been answered at a particular shrine, in fact, amounts to saying that the command governing the world is not Allah’s but the shrine’s. In short, every polytheistic belief and utterance, in the final analysis, leads up to the disavowal of the divine attributes. Polytheism is nothing but that one should ascribe the divine attributes of being All-Hearing and All-Seeing, Almighty and All- Powerful, etc. to others than Allah, and should deny that Allah alone is the possessor of all these attributes.

29. Thaqalan is derived from thiql which means a burden, and thaqal is the burden loaded on a conveyance. Thaqalan (dual) therefore would mean: two loaded burdens. Here this word refers to the jinn and men; who are both loaded on the earth. As the addressees here are those jinn and men who have turned away from the service and obedience of their Lord and Sustainer, they have been addressed as: O burdens of the earth, In other words, the Creator is warning these two unworthy groups of His creation, saying: You who have become a burden for My earth, I am soon going to take you to task.

30. This does not mean that Allah at this time is too busy to call the disobedient servants to account, but it means that Allah has arranged a special time-table according to which He will first bring into existence generation after generation of the jinn and men in the world till an appointed time, and will provide them with an opportunity to work in this examination center of the world; then at a specific hour the examination will be suddenly brought to a close, and all the jinn and men living at that time will be given death simultaneously. Then at another time which is preordained with Allah for calling the jinn and men to account, all the former and the latter generations of both the species will be resurrected and mustered at one and the same time. In view of this time-table the two species have been warned, as if to say: We are yet busy with the work of the first period, and the time for the second period has not yet come, not to speak of embarking on the work of the third period. But you may rest assured. The time is fast approaching when We shall be free to take you to task. This lack of leisure does not mean that Allah is too occupied with one kind of work to attend to another kind of work. But its nature is analogous to the occupation of a person who has set a time-table for different sorts of the works and in respect of a work whose time has not yet arrived according to the time-table, he may say that he at the moment is not free for it.

31. Here, alaa can also be taken in the meaning of powers. In view of the context, each meaning seems to be appropriate in its own way. According to the first meaning, it would mean: Today you are being ungrateful for Our blessings and are being treacherous and disloyal by adopting the different attitudes of disbelief, polytheism, atheism, sin and disobedience, but tomorrow when the time comes for accountability, We shall see which of Our blessings you prove to be the result of a mere accident, or the fruit of your own ability, or manifestation of the kindness of a god or goddess or saint. In the second case, the meaning would be: Today you are mocking the doctrine of Resurrection and the gathering together of all mankind and jinn on the Day of Judgment and the accountability and the Heaven and Hell, and are harboring the misunderstanding that such things are not at all possible, but when We gather you together for accountability and all that you deny today will appear before you, then We shall see which of Our powers you deny.

32. The heavens and the earth: The universe or the kingdom of God. The verse means to impress this: It is not in your power to escape Allah’s grasp. When the time for the accountability of which you are being foretold comes, you will be seized and brought before God in any case wherever you may be. To go out of God’s reach you will have to flee from the universe of God for which you do not have the required power. If you feel that you have the power, then you may use that power if you so will.

33. The word shuwaz, as used in the original, means the pure, smokeless flame, and nuhas is the gross smoke without a flame. These two things, one after the other, will be let loose upon the men and jinn, when they try to escape the accountability of Allah.

34. This refers to the Day of Resurrection. Bursting of the heavens implies loosening of the discipline of the heavens, scattering of the celestial bodies, upsetting of the system of the heavens. And the meaning of reddening like red leather is that during that great upheaval anyone, who looks up towards the sky, will feel as though the entire heavens were on fire.

35. That is, today you deem Resurrection impossible; you think Allah has no power to bring it about. But when it will have taken place and you see with your eyes all that you are being foretold, which of the powers of Allah will you then deny.

36. This is being explained by the subsequent sentence: The culprits there shall be recognized by their faces. It means that in that great assembly where all the former and the latter generations will have gathered together, there will be no need to ask as to who are the culprits, nor will any man or jinn need be asked whether he is a culprit or not. The dejected faces of the culprits, their terror-stricken eyes, their disturbed and alarmed countenances will themselves be enough to expose the secret that they are the culprits. When a crowd comprising both the guilty and the innocent people, is encircled by the police, the calm and tranquil of the innocent people and the bewildered and disturbed state of the guilty ones tell at one glance as to who in the crowd is the culprit and who is innocent. This general rule is in most cases belied in the world, because the worldly police do not enjoy the reputation of being fair and just, rather on many an occasion they have turned out to be more bothersome for the gentle and innocent people than for the culprits. Therefore, here it is possible that when encircled by the police the gentle and innocent people might become even more terror-stricken than the criminals, but in the Hereafter, when every noble person will have complete faith in the justice of Allah, bewilderment will afflict only those whose conscience will be conscious of their being the culprits themselves, and who on their very arrival in the Court of God will become certain of their doom, which they had regarded as impossible or doubtful in the world and so had been committing every heinous sin and crime.

37. The real basis of the crime according to the Quran is that the servant, who is benefiting by the blessings of his Sustainer, should harbor the misunderstanding that the blessings have been bestowed by no one, but have reached to him of their own accord, or that the blessings are not the gift of God but the fruit of his own ability or good fortune, or that they are the gift of God, but God has no right on His servants, or that God Himself has not done him those favors but some other being has gotten these done for him. These are the wrong concepts on account of which man becomes independent of God and being free from His obedience and service performs acts which He has forbidden, and avoids acts which He has enjoined. Seen in this light every crime and every sin is, in reality, a disavowal of the favors of Allah whether a person denies them by the word of mouth or not. But the person who, in fact, has no intention of the denial, but acknowledges the favors from the depths of his heart, commits an error occasionally because of human weakness, he shows repentance on it and tries to avoid it. This saves him from being included among the deniers. Apart from this, all other culprits are, in fact, beliers of Allah’s blessings and deniers of His favors. That is why it has been said: When you will have been seized as culprits, then We shall see as to which of Our favors you deny. In Surah At-Takathur, Ayat 8, the same thing has been put thus: On that Day you will certainly be called to account for the blessings you had been granted. That is, it will be asked: Had We granted you these blessings or not. Then, what attitude did you adopt towards your Benefactor, and in what ways did you use His blessings.

38. That is, in Hell they will feel oppressed with thirst again and again. and will rush towards the springs of water, but will find only boiling water, which will not satisfy their thirst, and they will thus continue to wander to and fro between Hell and the springs for ever and ever.

39. That is, will you even at that time be able to deny that God can bring about Resurrection, can give you another life after death, can call you to account, and can also make this Hell in which you are suffering punishment today.