al-Nabaʾ 78:40

Innā andharnākum ʿadhāban qarībā · Yawma yanẓuru'l-marʾu mā qaddamat yadāh · Wa yaqūlu'l-kāfiru yā laytanī kuntu turābā "We have warned you of a punishment near at hand — on the day when a man looks at what his own hands have sent ahead, and the denier says, 'Would that I were dust!'"

Root: ن-ذ-ر. This root was treated at al-Baqara 2/6 and what was recorded there is not repeated.

In summary the finding there was: إِنْذَار is to give news of a coming danger; a warning does not remove the danger — it makes it visible.

What is to be added here is this: the verb comes in the perfect.

The verse does not say "we are warning you" or "we shall warn you". It says "we have warned" — the past tense.

And this points at the sūra itself: the warning has been given — over forty verses. The sūra announces that it has finished its work.

Moreover the verb is first person plural: andharnā. The "We" used through the sūra (jaʿalnā, khalaqnā, banaynā, anzalnā, aḥṣaynā) comes here for the last time.

قَرِيب — Root: ق-ر-ب. To be near.

The choice of the word is worth noting, because the sūra's addressee lives precisely on an assumption of distance. That is the assumption beneath the question "When?": this business is far off, perhaps it will never happen.

And the observation recorded at the fourth and fifth verses is completed here: it was noted there that the particle سَ (the near future) was used, not sawfa. Here the same thing is said with an adjective: qarīb.

Near by what measure? The Qurʾān explains this elsewhere:

"They see it as far off; but We see it as near." (al-Maʿārij 70/6-7)

Nearness and distance, that is, change according to where one looks from. And the next sūra will sharpen this further: "as though they had remained no more than an evening" (al-Nāziʿāt 79/46).

ٱلْمَرْء — Root: م-ر-أ. A person, a man, a single human being.

The choice of the word is meaningful. Through the sūra the plural has been used: yatasāʾalūn, sa-yaʿlamūn, taʾtūna, ṭāghīn, muttaqīn. Here it moves suddenly to the singular.

In Arabic ٱلْمَرْء carries a different flavour from insān (إِنْسَان) or nās (نَاس): it conveys the individual, not the species. English catches this with "the individual" — or with "a man", where that word names one person rather than the kind.

And this is what the scene requires. In a place come to in throngs (78/18: afwājā), the looking is done one by one.

The Qurʾān uses this word in scenes of separation:

"On that day a man flees from his brother, his mother, his father, his wife and his children. On that day each one of them will have concern enough for himself." (ʿAbasa 80/34-37)

The same word (al-marʾ), the same scene, the same isolating.

يَنظُرُ — he looks. Naẓar — to look, to turn the eye towards. The verb's coming in the imperfect conveys that the looking continues.

And the choice of verb is worth noting: it does not say "he sees" (yarā), it says "he looks". Looking is a voluntary act; seeing simply happens.

It was recorded in the section on al-Zilzāl: there "they will see their deeds" (yaraw aʿmālahum) — a passive encounter. Here the person looks.

I record this as an observation.

قَدَّمَ — Root: ق-د-م. To put forward, to send ahead. قَدَم — the foot (that which steps forward). قَادِم — the one coming, the one to come. مُقَدِّمَة — a vanguard, an introduction.

The Qurʾān relates deeds as something "sent ahead" and this is a conception worth recording:

"Whatever good you send ahead for yourselves, you will find it with God." (al-Baqara 2/110)

"On that day a man will be told of what he sent ahead and what he left behind." (al-Qiyāma 75/13)

"We give life to the dead, and We write down what they sent ahead and their traces." (Yā-Sīn 36/12)

The conception is this: the human being is on a journey and sends his deeds on ahead. At the place he arrives at he finds them.

This is a different image from the scales of al-Qāriʿa, and the two complete one another: the scales measure; "sending ahead" carries.

يَدَاهُ — his two hands. A metonymy: the hand is the instrument of the act; by saying "hands" the deed is meant.

But why the dual? In Arabic both dual and plural can be used for "his hands". The choosing of the dual is attached to the fact that a human being works with two hands; the expression, that is, stays concrete.

An observation. In verses six to sixteen of the sūra it was related that God did everything (jaʿalnā, khalaqnā, banaynā). In the fortieth verse what the human being's own hands did is looked at.

The sūra opens with a work of a hand and closes with a work of a hand: the one a hand that builds, the other a hand that will give account.

I record this as my own reading.

The sūra's last sentence begins and the singular is used once again: ٱلْكَافِر — with the definite article, conveying the kind.

The definition recorded at al-Baqara 2/6 holds here: unbelief is not a failure to know; it is the covering over of what one knows. The concrete sense of the root is to cover — the farmer's covering of the seed with soil.

And now the root of the word joins with the word that is spoken.

Kāfir — one who covers. And the word he speaks: "Would that I were dust."

The man who covered all his life wishes, at the end, to be covered. The soil that lies in the concrete sense of the root becomes the thing he wishes for.

I record this as my own reading. The sense of the root (to cover) and the agricultural origin of the word (covering the seed with soil) were treated in this commentary in the sections on al-ʿĀdiyāt and al-Baqara; the one who makes the link is I.

لَيْتَ — a particle of wishing. Arabic has two particles of wishing and the difference between them matters:

The verse has layta. What is said, that is, is a wish the speaker himself knows to be impossible.

يَا — a vocative particle. And there is an oddity here: a vocative particle normally requires an addressee ("O so-and-so!"). Here there is no addressee.

In Arabic this use is called nidāʾ al-tahaddus or the cry of regret: although there is no person being called, the vocative particle is used to show the pain of the word. The English exclamation "Oh!" — or "Alas!" — does this work.

The fullest rendering of the sentence, then, is close to: "Oh, would that I were dust!"

In the Qurʾān the formula yā layta is almost always in sentences of regret:

"The wrongdoer will bite his hands and say: would that I had taken a way with the Messenger!" (al-Furqān 25/27)

"Would that I had not known my reckoning! Would that it [death] had been the end of me!" (al-Ḥāqqa 69/25-27)

"Would that I had sent something ahead for my life!" (al-Fajr 89/24)

The last example is striking: the verb there is قَدَّمْتُ — the same root as the qaddamat of this verse. Two sūras, that is, use the same verb in the same scene.

The last two words of the sūra. And one of the most dwelt-upon sentences in the Qurʾān.

تُرَاب — Root: ت-ر-ب. Dust, earth. And as was recorded above at the thirty-third verse, the word أَتْرَاب (coevals) is from the same root.

Views on the sense of the wish:

The first and second views are the strongest and they do not exclude one another. Both want the same thing: not to have existed.

And now the sūra's last sentence has to be joined with a proof set up earlier in this commentary.

At al-Baqara 2/28 a four-stage proof was treated:

The finding recorded there was: "the fourth step you object to is the repetition of the second step, which has already taken place once."

The last sentence of Sūrat al-Nabaʾ relates a movement inside this scheme.

The denier is in the position of having lived the fourth step — he has been raised. And what he wishes is to go back to the first step: "would that I were dust."

The wish, that is, asks for the reversal of the four-step chain. But the chain runs one way only, and this explains why the wish is framed with layta (the particle of the impossible wish).

I record this as my own reading. What it rests on is the scheme of al-Baqara 2/28 and the content of this verse; both are in the text, the joining is mine.

And one last observation.

• The sixth verse of the sūra: "Did We not make the earth a cradle?" — مِهَادًا
• The last word of the sūra: "Would that I were dust." — تُرَابًا

Cradle and dust. Both from the same earth.

In the sixth verse the earth is the prepared ground on which a human being lives. In the fortieth verse the substance of that same earth is what the human being wants to be.

And what was recorded above about the cradle works here once more: a cradle is a place one does not stay in. The wish in the fortieth verse is the wish never to have left the cradle.

I record this as my own reading; the positions of the two words in the sūra, however, are in the text.