al-Nāziʿāt 79:45-46

Innamā anta mundhiru man yakhshāhā · Ka-annahum yawma yarawnahā lam yalbathū illā ʿashiyyatan aw ḍuḥāhā "You are only a warner to whoever feels awe of it. On the day they see it, it will be as though they had tarried only an evening, or its forenoon."

إِنَّمَا — a particle of restriction: "only, nothing but."

And the particle sets a limitation. The forty-third verse had said what the Prophet does not know; this verse says what he does.

That is, the two verses form a pair: one describes what falls outside the task, the other the task itself.

مُنذِر — Root: ن-ذ-ر. A warner. This root was treated at al-Baqara 2/6; the finding there is not repeated: إِنْذَار is to give notice of a danger to come; a warning does not remove the danger, it makes it visible.

And the same root occurred in the last verse of Sūrat al-Nabaʾ: "We have warned you of a punishment near at hand" (78/40 — andharnākum).

The two neighbouring sūras use the same root in their closing verses. This is a datum that can be verified.

And here a question arises: is the warning only to the one who feels awe?

The Qurʾān elsewhere keeps the scope of the warning wide:

"…that you may warn a heedless people." (Yāsīn 36/6)

"It is a warner to mankind." (al-Muddaththir 74/36)

"…that he may be a warner to all the worlds." (al-Furqān 25/1)

The exegetes' solution:

The first explanation is the most widespread and removes the conflict with the other verses.

And the link within the sūra. As recorded above, the root خ-ش-ي occurs three times in this sūra (19, 26, 45). And in all three it sets a qualification:

• 19: what is offered to Pharaoh as a result is awe.
• 26: the lesson is for whoever feels awe.
• 45: the warning reaches whoever feels awe.

Three times the sūra states the condition of its own working.

I record this as an observation.

And note the pronoun: يَخْشَىٰهَا — "whoever feels awe of it". The pronoun refers back to the Hour.

That is, the object of the awe here is not God but the Hour. This is a little different from the word's widespread use in the Qurʾān (awe of God) and is explained by the context: the last part of the sūra is about the Hour.

كَأَنَّ — a particle of comparison: "as though".

And what the sentence sets up is an illusion of time.

When they see the Hour, they will feel that the period they spent in the world was very short.

The Qurʾān repeats this idea in many places and the measures vary:

"How long did you tarry on the earth, in number of years? They will say: 'We tarried a day or part of a day.'" (al-Muʾminūn 23/112-113)

"On the day He gathers them, it will be as though they had tarried only an hour of the day." (Yūnus 10/45)

"The guilty will swear that they tarried no more than an hour." (al-Rūm 30/55)

"On the day they see it, they will have tarried only an evening or a forenoon." (al-Nāziʿāt 79/46)

What is common is this: the measure is always a part of a day. Not a year, not a month, not a day — a part of a day.

Root: ل-ب-ث. To stay, to remain, to linger.

And this root had occurred in Sūrat al-Nabaʾ:

"They will tarry there for ages." (78/23 — lābithīna fīhā aḥqābā)

This link was already recorded in the section on al-Nabaʾ and the table was given. It is not repeated here; in summary:

The two neighbouring sūras use the same root in exactly opposite directions.

And what the link sets up is this: the proportion of the two durations is reversed. A lifetime looks long while it is being lived; looked at from there it is half a day. Punishment looks abstract when looked at from a distance; there it is ages.

عَشِيَّة — Root: ع-ش-و. The evening, the last part of the day. عِشَاء — the time of the night prayer.

ضُحَىٰ — the forenoon; treated in the section on Sūrat al-Ḍuḥā.

And there is a grammatical point here which is needed in order to understand the expression.

ضُحَىٰهَا — "its forenoon". What does the pronoun refer to?

To عَشِيَّة. That is, the expression is: "an evening, or the forenoon of that evening."

This may look odd — what is the forenoon of an evening?

In Arabic the day is counted from evening to evening (unlike the ordinary English reckoning, in which the day runs from midnight). That is, a "day" begins with an evening and lasts until the following evening. The forenoon of that day is the forenoon of the morning that comes after that evening.

That is, the expression says this: one of the two halves of a day.

Some of the exegetes explain it thus; some read the expression generally as "either an evening or a morning — that is, a very short time."

Both readings arrive at the same result: less than half a day.

And in this commentary this verse was already mentioned in the section on al-Ḍuḥā. What was recorded there was: "The shortness of a lifetime is measured by the two ends of a day."

And this word occurs in the sūra for the second time. In the twenty-ninth verse: "He darkened [the heaven's] night and brought forth its forenoon" — وَأَخْرَجَ ضُحَىٰهَا.

The same word, at the two ends.

In the first the forenoon is a thing brought forth — the object of an act of creation. In the second the forenoon is a unit of measure — and what it measures is a lifetime.

I record this as my own reading. The repetition of the word is, however, a datum that can be verified.

And the sūra closes with the verse-ending sound it has carried through thirty-two verses: -āhā.