وَهُمْ يَصْطَرِخُونَ فِيهَا رَبَّنَآ أَخْرِجْنَا نَعْمَلْ صَٰلِحًا غَيْرَ ٱلَّذِى كُنَّا نَعْمَلُ أَوَلَمْ نُعَمِّرْكُم مَّا يَتَذَكَّرُ فِيهِ مَن تَذَكَّرَ وَجَآءَكُمُ ٱلنَّذِيرُ
"There they cry out: 'Our Lord! Bring us out, and we will do righteous work, other than what we used to do!' — 'Did We not give you life enough for whoever would take heed to take heed in? And the warner came to you.'"
يَصْطَرِخُون — root ص-ر-خ, Form VIII: to shout aloud, to call for help. The word carries the force of the voice.
And the request is worth recording: naʿmal ṣāliḥan ghayra'lladhī kunnā naʿmal — "other than what we used to do." That is, the wrongness of their own deeds is admitted.
| Answer | What it says |
|---|---|
| A-wa lam nuʿammirkum mā yatadhakkaru fīhi man tadhakkar | A term was given |
| Wa jāʾakumu'n-nadhīr | The warning came |
The two answers attach to two verses of Fāṭir (al-Malāʾika): the twenty-fourth verse says that a warner came to every community, and the forty-fifth will say that the term has been deferred. The sūra works these two grounds through from beginning to end.
And the description of the term is worth recording: mā yatadhakkaru fīhi man tadhakkar — "as much as one who would take heed needs to take heed". The measure is not an absolute age but sufficiency. In Ghāfir (al-Muʾmin) at 40/67 the stages of a lifetime were enumerated; here a lifetime is mentioned not as a duration but as an opportunity.