al-Shūrā 42:47

Istajībū li-rabbikum min qabli an yaʾtiya yawmun lā maradda lahu mina'llāh; mā lakum min maljaʾin yawmaʾidhin wa mā lakum min nakīr

"Answer your Lord before there comes a day that God will not turn back. On that day you will have no refuge, and no denial."

The series tabulated at the twenty-sixth verse is completed here:

After four steps the sūra arrives at a command. This is a fact of arrangement that can be verified from the text.

And the qualification li-rabbikum: the one to be answered is not "us" but "your Lord". It was the same in the thirty-eighth verse: istajābū li-rabbihim. The owner of the call, that is, is not the Prophet. This accords with the limit of responsibility drawn in the sixth and forty-eighth verses.

Lajaʾa — to take refuge, to flee somewhere for protection. Maljaʾ — a place of refuge.

The word is rare in the Qurʾān; it occurs in the same sense in al-Tawba 9/118 (wa ẓannū an lā maljaʾa mina'llāhi illā ilayh — "they realised that there is no refuge from God except with Him"). This verse is worth recording, because it shows the direction of refuge.

Nakīr — root ن-ك-ر: not to know, not to recognise, to deny. Munkar — the unrecognised, the unaccepted; inkār is from the same root.

Two readings of the word's sense here are transmitted:

Both readings are transmitted in the classical sources; I impose no preference.

An observation about the arrangement: the sentence gives two negations in the same pattern — mā lakum min maljaʾ / mā lakum min nakīr. One is a place (nowhere to flee), the other speech (nothing to say). Neither with the body nor with the tongue, that is, is any way out left.