فَلَا تَعْلَمُ نَفْسٌ مَّآ أُخْفِىَ لَهُم مِّن قُرَّةِ أَعْيُنٍ جَزَآءًۢ بِمَا كَانُوا۟ يَعْمَلُونَ
"No soul knows what delight of the eyes has been hidden away for them, as a recompense for what they used to do."
And here, immediately after the description, instead of the recompense being recounted, its unrecountability is stated.
The same line was treated in al-Wāqiʿa 56/61: wa nunshiʾakum fī mā lā taʿlamūn — "and We shall build you up in a form you do not know". What was recorded there was this: "Here the verse refuses to give a description." I rely on that treatment.
| Place | Expression | What is not known |
|---|---|---|
| al-Wāqiʿa 56/61 | Wa nunshiʾakum fī mā lā taʿlamūn | The form of the rebuilding |
| al-Sajda 32/17 | Fa-lā taʿlamu nafsun mā ukhfiya lahum | The recompense that has been hidden |
Both close off knowledge, but by two separate doors: al-Wāqiʿa makes the process unknowable, al-Sajda the outcome.
نَفْسٌ — indefinite (nakira) and within a negation. In Arabic an indefinite that comes within a negation conveys ʿumūm (generality): "no soul at all". That is, no exception is left.
أُخْفِىَ — the verb is passive: the one who hides is not stated. Root خ-ف-ي: to hide, to cover. The same root was treated in Ghāfir (al-Muʾmin) 40/19 (wa mā tukhfi'l-ṣudūr) — there what was hidden was what is held within; here what is hidden is the recompense, and the party doing the hiding has changed.
I record this as my own reading; its ground is that the two verses use the same root in opposite directions: in Ghāfir man hides and God knows; in al-Sajda God hides and man does not know. The same verb, in two directions.
Root ق-ر-ر: to stay in a place, to settle, to remain fixed. Qarār — the place where one settles; istiqrār — settledness. And the lexicographers record a second branch of the root as well: to be cold (qurr — cold).
The two branches meet in the expression qurratu'l-ʿayn, and the lexicographers give two explanations:
| Explanation | How it is built |
|---|---|
| 1 | The eye's coming to rest — its ceasing to look for anything else to look at; the end of searching |
| 2 | The eye's growing cool — in the Arabic language the tear of joy is counted cool and the tear of grief hot |
Both explanations are transmitted by the lexicographers and do not exclude one another. I do not impose a preference.
The usual English rendering is "delight of the eyes"; but the picture in the Arabic is not delight but stillness or coolness. I record this difference.
And aʿyun is an indefinite plural — "eyes", indefinite. The expression itself carries an indefiniteness too: what the delight of the eyes consists in is not said. The sentence had already said this: lā taʿlamu nafsun.
جَزَآءًۢ بِمَا كَانُوا۟ يَعْمَلُونَ — "as a recompense for what they did". The verb kānū yaʿmalūn — a past that states continuity. That is, the recompense is tied not to a single act but to a doing that went on.