وَلَوْ تَرَىٰٓ إِذِ ٱلْمُجْرِمُونَ نَاكِسُوا۟ رُءُوسِهِمْ عِندَ رَبِّهِمْ رَبَّنَآ أَبْصَرْنَا وَسَمِعْنَا فَٱرْجِعْنَا نَعْمَلْ صَٰلِحًا إِنَّا مُوقِنُونَ
Wa law tarā idhi'l-mujrimūna nākisū ruʾūsihim ʿinda rabbihim, rabbanā abṣarnā wa samiʿnā fa'rjiʿnā naʿmal ṣāliḥan innā mūqinūn
"If only you could see: the guilty, before their Lord, with their heads bowed low: 'Our Lord! We have seen and we have heard. Send us back that we may do righteous work; now we are certain.'"
The sentence begins with law (an unrealised condition), and the answer to the condition is not stated. In Arabic this is called ḥadhf jawāb al-sharṭ: the answer is left to the hearer's imagining.
I record this as an observation about the word order: "if only you could see…" is said, and the sentence passes to the scene. What is not said is not said because it is heavier than the scene itself.
The concrete sense of the root: to turn a thing over, to set it head down, to bring its top to the bottom. Nakasa'l-shayʾa — he turned it over.
| Derivative | Meaning |
|---|---|
| نَكَسَ | To turn over, to set head down |
| نَاكِس | One whose head has fallen forward (active participle) |
| نُكْس / نُكَاس | The relapse of an illness — turning back while on the way to recovery |
| مَنْكُوس | Turned over |
The English "relapse" carries exactly this picture, though it comes from an unconnected word: to fall back while going forward.
And the pattern here is the plural of the active participle: nākisū ruʾūsihim — "those who bow their heads". That is, the head is recounted not as bent from outside but as the person's own condition.
I record this as my own reading; its ground is the pattern: the sentence does not say "their heads were bowed" (passive), it says "those who have bowed their heads" (active participle). No compelling hand appears in the scene; the posture itself is recounted.
| Verse | Who | Bodily movement | How |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12 | Al-mujrimūn | Head fallen forward — nākisū ruʾūsihim | On that day, at the meeting |
| 15 | Alladhīna … dhukkirū bihā | Falling prostrate — kharrū sujjadan | Now, when reminded |
The same direction: head downwards. The difference lies in the time and in the will. I record this as my own reading, and its ground is that the two verses stand in the same sūra, three verses apart: the sūra shows the same bodily posture twice — one in its time and of itself, the other after the time has passed.
In the ninth verse three doors were given to man: wa jaʿala lakumu'l-samʿa wa'l-abṣāra wa'l-afʾidah — hearing, eyes, hearts. And the sentence had ended with qalīlan mā tashkurūn.
In the twelfth verse the other side names two of those doors with its own mouth: abṣarnā wa samiʿnā — "we have seen and we have heard".
| Verse | Who says it | Expression | What it states |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9 | The text | Jaʿala lakumu'l-samʿa wa'l-abṣāra wa'l-afʾida | The giving |
| 12 | The other side | Abṣarnā wa samiʿnā | Acknowledgement — but in the scene |
One. In the ninth verse the order is ear → eye (samʿ first). In the twelfth verse the order is reversed: eye → ear (abṣarnā first). The other side says first what it saw.
Two. The third member of the triad of the ninth verse is missing here: afʾida (hearts) is not named. Two organs are counted, the heart is not.
Three. But at the end of the sentence there is a word that names the heart's work: innā mūqinūn — "now we are certain". Yaqīn is an act of the heart.
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is that these three details stand together: all three of the doors given in the ninth verse are stated in the twelfth as having worked — two by name, the third by its act. That is, the scene shows not that the instruments did not work but that they worked late. The observation recorded in al-Aḥqāf 46/26 goes one step further here: there was "an opportunity not used"; here there is an opportunity used but past its time.
The same request was treated in Fāṭir 35/37: rabbanā akhrijnā naʿmal ṣāliḥan ghayra'lladhī kunnā naʿmal — "Our Lord! Bring us out, that we may do a righteous work other than what we used to do!"
| Fāṭir 35/37 | al-Sajda 32/12 | |
|---|---|---|
| Verb | Akhrijnā — bring out (from the fire) | Irjiʿnā — send back (to before) |
| Where it is said | Inside the fire — yaṣṭarikhūna fīhā (crying out) | In the presence — ʿinda rabbihim |
| Additional note | Ghayra'lladhī kunnā naʿmal — other than what we did | Innā mūqinūn — now we know for certain |
| What it rests on | Admitting that the deed was wrong | Having acquired the knowledge |
| The answer given | A-wa-lam nuʿammirkum… — time had been given | No answer — verse 13 says something else |
The difference is worth recording, and I give it as my own reading: the request in Fāṭir puts forward the mending of the deed, the request in al-Sajda puts forward knowledge. Both make a ground of the thing they claim was lacking in the world — and both grounds are made void by the verse itself: in Fāṭir by saying "time had been given", in al-Sajda by stating in the thirteenth verse that the ruling has already been laid down.
And there is a difference of place between the scene in Fāṭir and the scene here: there the request comes from inside the fire, here from the presence. That is, the scene of al-Sajda is the earlier one — and even so there is no return.