هَلْ يَنظُرُونَ إِلَّآ أَن تَأْتِيَهُمُ ٱلْمَلَٰٓئِكَةُ أَوْ يَأْتِىَ أَمْرُ رَبِّكَ كَذَٰلِكَ فَعَلَ ٱلَّذِينَ مِن قَبْلِهِمْ وَمَا ظَلَمَهُمُ ٱللَّهُ وَلَٰكِن كَانُوٓا۟ أَنفُسَهُمْ يَظْلِمُونَ · فَأَصَابَهُمْ سَيِّـَٔاتُ مَا عَمِلُوا۟ وَحَاقَ بِهِم مَّا كَانُوا۟ بِهِۦ يَسْتَهْزِءُونَ
Hal yanẓurūna illā an taʾtiyahumu'l-malāʾikatu aw yaʾtiya amru rabbik, ka-dhālika faʿala'lladhīna min qablihim, wa mā ẓalamahumu'llāhu wa lākin kānū anfusahum yaẓlimūn · Fa-aṣābahum sayyiʾātu mā ʿamilū wa ḥāqa bihim mā kānū bihī yastahziʾūn
"Do they look for anything but that the angels should come to them, or that the command of your Lord should come? Those before them did the same. God did not wrong them; it was themselves they were wronging. · The evils of what they had done struck them, and the very thing they mocked closed in around them."
It must be recorded: the construction amru rabbik is the same as the amru'llāh of the sūra's first verse.
The first verse had said: atā amru'llāhi fa-lā tastaʿjilūh — "it has come; do not seek to hasten it." The thirty-third says: aw yaʾtiya amru rabbik — "or that the command of your Lord should come."
| Verse | Verb | Mood | Who is speaking |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Atā | Perfect | The text — a declaration of certainty |
| 33 | Yaʾtiya | Imperfect (subjunctive) | The text — describing what they wait for |
This is a repetition verifiable within the sūra, and I record this as my own reading: what the first verse forbade them to hasten is named in the thirty-third as the one thing they wait for. The sūra thus explains, thirty-two verses later, why that prohibition was laid down: if no other sign is accepted, that is all that remains.
هَلْ يَنظُرُونَ إِلَّآ — naẓar here has the sense of waiting for. And the restriction built with illā must be recorded: the verse does not say "this is what they wait for"; it says "they wait for nothing but this."
The lexicographers give the concrete sense of the root thus: a thing turning back and coming down upon its owner, closing around him. Ḥāqa bihī — it befell him, it wrapped itself about him. In the Qurʾān the word occurs almost everywhere together with mockery or with plotting.
And the construction of the sentence is worth recording: ḥāqa bihim mā kānū bihī yastahziʾūn — what closes in on them is the very thing they mocked. The punishment is not fetched from outside; the thing mocked comes back.
The same sentence is repeated at several places in the Qurʾān and was treated in this commentary: the root was analysed at Ghāfir (al-Muʾmin), 40/45, and the same point of word order was recorded at al-Zumar, 39/48, and at al-Anbiyāʾ, 21/41. I rely on those treatments.