al-Munāfiqūn 63:10

Wa anfiqū min mā razaqnākum min qabli an yaʾtiya aḥadakumu'l-mawtu fa-yaqūla rabbi lawlā akhkhartanī ilā ajalin qarībin fa-aṣṣaddaqa wa akun mina'ṣ-ṣāliḥīn

"Spend of what We have provided for you, before death comes to one of you and he says, 'My Lord! If only You had granted me respite for a short term, so that I might give in charity and be among the righteous.'"

In the seventh verse the hypocrites' sentence was this: لَا تُنْفِقُوا — "do not spend".

The command in the tenth verse: وَأَنْفِقُوا — "spend".

The same root, the same form, one a prohibition and one a command. Three verses later the sūra gives the exact counterpart of that sentence.

And the counterpart is not a direct refutation. The verse does not say "do not do what they say". It only gives the command. That is, the answer is not at the level of argument but at the level of behaviour.

This accords with the sūra's general method: in the first verse speech was taken out of being a measure; from beginning to end the sūra speaks not with words but with acts.

This expression occurred at al-Baqara 2/3 as well: wa mimmā razaqnāhum yunfiqūn — "and they spend of what We have provided for them". There it was the third attribute of the godfearing.

And it says two things:

One. مِنْ (min) — the partitive. "Of the provision", that is, of a part of it. The whole is not asked for. This is the same particle and the same function as the min faḍli'llāh at al-Jumuʿa 62/10: a measure is set both on the seeking and on the giving.

Two. رَزَقْنَاكُمْ — "We provided". The subject of the verb is the first person plural. That is, the thing to be given is not what the giver produced himself but what was given to him.

This comes out at the same place as the reading recorded for the phrase "the food of the needy" at al-Māʿūn 107/3. It was recorded there: "the food given is not the giver's in the first place; it is the needy man's. The giver is not bestowing a favour; he is handing over another's property to its owner."

Here the same idea is established by way of the source of ownership: what is in your hand is not yours; it was given to you. And this accords with the answer in the seventh verse too: the treasuries belong to God.

The command has an expiry date. And the date is an unknown date.

أَحَدَكُمُ — "to one of you". Singular. In a command addressed to a crowd, death comes in the singular. This is something the Qurʾān does regularly in describing death: life is collective, death singular.

The finding recorded at al-Baqara 2/48 — the loneliness of the reckoning — is tied in here.

يَأْتِيَ — "to come". Death is described not as a place one goes to but as something that comes. Man does not go to it; it comes to man. This is the same conception as the mulāqīkum (it will meet you) at al-Jumuʿa 62/8.

Here the verse sets up a scene: the man at the moment of death, and the sentence he will say.

This is a technique the Qurʾān uses often — the relating of an outcome from the mouth of the one who undergoes it. In the discussion of al-Māʿūn it was recorded for al-Muddaththir 74/42-46: "one as a confession from the mouths of those in Hell, the other as a diagnosis made while still in this world."

The same work is done here: the ground of the command is given not as a ruling but as a sentence of regret.

And the effect of this is different. Had it said "if you do not give you will regret it", it would have been a threat. Instead the regret's own sentence is transmitted, and the reader tries that sentence in his own mouth.

رَبِّ — the shortened form of rabbī (in the vocative). The address is direct.

لَوْلَا — a particle with two functions in Arabic:

1. Conditional: "had it not been for" (lawlā + a noun). 2. Taḥḍīḍ / tandīm: when it comes with a perfect verb it denotes regret and reproach — "if only you had done thus".

Here the second. And in Arabic this use is not a request but a reproach directed at the past. That is, the sentence means not "grant me respite" but "why did You not grant me respite".

This fine difference matters: the man is not making a request, he is making a complaint. And the one addressed by the complaint is the one who could have granted the respite.

أَخَّرْتَنِي — root أ-خ-ر: to leave behind, to put off to a later time. Ākhir (the last) and ākhira (what comes after) are from the same root.

And this verb will be refused in the next verse with the same root: wa lan yuʾakhkhira'llāhu nafsan. Request and refusal, with the same word. The sūra sets what is asked for and what is not given face to face with two verbs from the same root.

This is the verse's most striking and most often passed-over place.

أَجَل — root أ-ج-ل: an appointed period, a term, a final date. At the centre of the word is a limit: an ajal is not the period itself but the point at which the period ends. In Arabic the ajal of a debt is its date of payment.

قَرِيب — "near". Root ق-ر-ب: nearness.

Now consider: a man at the moment of death asks for an additional period. How much does he ask for?

A short term. A little. Brief.

And this establishes a complete opposition with al-Baqara 2/96.

At al-Baqara 2/94-96 the test of wishing for death was taken up, and what was recorded there was this: "you will find them the greediest of people for life" and "each of them wishes to live a thousand years." The figure was dwelt on there: "The figure of a thousand years matters. What is wanted is not immortality — that is already known to be impossible. What is wanted is the longest of what is possible."

Now set the two pictures side by side:

This opposition is one of the sūra's sharpest observations, and it is worth dwelling on.

While alive a person asks for much time; at the moment of death he asks for little.

Why? Because the value of time depends on what it will be used for. The man in life wants time in order to live — living is a work that never finishes, and so however much there is, it is little. The man at the moment of death wants time in order to do one piece of work — and because that work is definite, the period needed is definite too.

And exactly here the bitterest side of the picture comes out: the period asked for is short because the work to be done is small. Giving in charity does not take long. The man is not asking for a whole lifetime; he is asking for a few days.

That is, what is noticed at the moment of death is this: the opportunity missed was not a great opportunity. What could have been done was small, was easy, would have taken a short time — and it was not done.

This comes out at the same place as the architecture of Sūrat al-Māʿūn. It was recorded there: "The sūra begins from the highest point and comes down to the lowest… The last sentence is a matter of pots and pans. This descent carries the sūra's real claim: great claims are tested in small things."

Al-Munāfiqūn 63/10 makes the same drop in scale by way of time: after eight verses of a grand narrative of claim and strategy, the last scene is a request for an additional period of a few days.

A note on morphology. The word's original form is أَتَصَدَّقَ (ataṣaddaqa — Form V). The letter tāʾ has been assimilated (idghām) to the ṣād that follows it, and it has become أَصَّدَّقَ. Assimilations of this kind are common in Arabic and make pronunciation easier.

The root ص-د-ق was taken up at al-Jumuʿa 62/6: soundness, truth. A ṣadaqa is the thing given — and that it carries this name is meaningful: the wealth given is the evidence that confirms the giver's faith. A word proves its truth with wealth.

And the choice of the verb is very important.

What does the man say? He does not say "let me pray". He does not say "let me believe". He does not say "let me repent".

He says "let me give in charity".

This choice accords exactly with the verse's context. The command was a command of infāq (wa anfiqū); and the regret too is over infāq. But there is something deeper: throughout the sūra wealth had been used as an instrument of power — the plan to cut off the infāq, the claim of might. In the last scene the same wealth becomes a matter of regret because it was not given.

So wealth appears twice in the sūra: a weapon when it is held, a regret when it is not given.

Here there is a structure much treated in the classical books of grammar.

Fa-aṣṣaddaqa is in the subjunctive (manṣūb) — because of the fāʾ in the answer to a clause expressing a request. What one would expect is that the verb coordinated with it should be in the subjunctive as well: wa akūna.

But the text has وَأَكُنْ — in the jussive (majzūm).

The explanation given in the grammatical sources is this: the verb is coordinated not with the wording of fa-aṣṣaddaqa but with its position. That is: the expression lawlā akhkhartanī fa-aṣṣaddaqa is equivalent in meaning to a conditional clause (in akhkhartanī aṣṣaddaq — "if You grant me respite I will give in charity"). The answer of a conditional clause is in the jussive. Therefore akun too has come in the jussive.

This is the structure called ʿaṭf ʿalā'l-maḥall (coordination with the position) in Arabic, and it is a subject the lexicographers treat often.

A note on the variant reading: it is stated that the reading وَأَكُونَ (in the subjunctive) is also recorded in the sources; this reading coordinates the verb with the wording. The meaning does not change. I make no attribution to particular imāms of the variant readings.

الصَّالِحِين — root ص-ل-ح. This root was taken up at al-Baqara 2/11-12: "to be fitting, to be in its right place, to be repaired. From the same root come ṣulḥ (peace) and ṣāliḥ."

And what was recorded there finds an ironic echo here: the hypocrites' claim about themselves was "we are only reformers" (innamā naḥnu muṣliḥūn). Now the man at the moment of death says "let me be among the righteous".

The same root, in two different positions: one a claim (muṣliḥ — a reformer), the other a wish (ṣāliḥ — one who is in right order). And between them lies a whole lifetime.

Understanding the value of time too late. The most practical side of the verse is the difference of scale between the two requests: a thousand years while alive, a few days while dying. This difference shows how time is valued — time gains value when what it is to be used for becomes definite. And that definiteness most often comes late.

No special comment is needed for the present-day equivalent of this: we notice how short a task would have taken only when we understand that we cannot do it.

The missing of what is small. The shortness of the period asked for shows the smallness of what was missed. And this is not a consolation but an aggravating finding: had a great opportunity been missed, it would have had an excuse. The missing of a small opportunity has no excuse.