يَوْمَئِذٍ يَصْدُرُ ٱلنَّاسُ أَشْتَاتًا لِّيُرَوْا۟ أَعْمَٰلَهُمْ
Yawmaʾidhin yaṣduru'n-nāsu ashtātan li-yuraw aʿmālahum "On that day people come forth in separate bands, so that their deeds may be shown to them."
The second yawmaʾidhin. The fourth verse said what the earth would do; here what people will do is said. The two verses open with the same adverb and show the two sides of the same day.
Ṣadara — to come back from the watering place. Flocks are taken down to water (this is وَرَدَ warada), then, once watered, they come back (this is صَدَرَ ṣadara). The two verbs are the pair that names the most basic rhythm of life in the desert: wurūd (the going down to water) and ṣudūr (the coming back from water).
The Qurʾān uses this itself, and the proof lies there: "[The two young women] said: We cannot water until the shepherds bring back their flocks from the water." (al-Qaṣaṣ 28/23). The verb here is exactly this verb, and its meaning is beyond dispute.
The word's use in this verse dresses the scene in an image: people are coming back from somewhere — there was a place they had gone to, their business there is finished, and now they are leaving.
| View | Where are they coming back from? | Its consequence |
|---|---|---|
| From the graves | Ṣudūr is the coming out from the graves | Ashtāt = they come out scattered, some in fear, some in safety |
| From the place of standing for judgement (mawqif) | Ṣudūr is the departure after the hearing has ended | Ashtāt = they disperse in groups separated according to where each is bound |
The strength of the second view lies in the verb itself: ṣadara conveys not going but coming back; the flock goes to the water, then comes back. Some place must have been reached for there to be a coming back from it.
The strength of the first view lies in the flow of the sūra: in the second verse the earth had brought out its weights; the sixth verse can be read as the continuation of that coming out.
My own reading is close to the second view, because the dictionary sense of the verb calls for it and because the expression at the end of the verse, "so that their deeds may be shown", looks as though it were announcing an outcome. But this is a preference and it is not binding; both views have been defended in the classical sources.
One more word from the same root: صَدْر — the chest. This root was treated in the section on Sūrat al-Inshirāḥ; as was recorded there, the core of the root is the sense of what comes forward, the place of issuing: a maṣdar is a place of issuing, the ṣadr al-majlis is the head of the assembly, and the chest is the part of the body that comes forward. Coming back from water, too, is the flock's parting and issuing from the water's edge.
And this must be recorded: the next sūra will describe the inner side of the reckoning with ٱلصُّدُور (breasts), a word from the same root (al-ʿĀdiyāt 100/10). Two neighbouring sūras describe, with the same root, the one the outside (the coming forth of people) and the other the inside (the sifting of what is in the breasts).
Root: ش-ت-ت. To scatter, to fall apart, to break away from one another. Shattat — it scattered. Close to tafarruq but different: in shatt, alongside the separation, there is also unlikeness to one another.
- شَتَّى (shattā) — various, differing from one another, each apart.
- شَتِيت — scattered, sparse.
- أَشْتَات — the plural of shatt or of shatīt: scattered groups, communities separate from one another.
The link with al-Layl 92/4. The same root occurs in a most striking place in the Qurʾān:
"Surely your strivings are shattā — they go apart from one another." (al-Layl 92/4)
Sūrat al-Layl says that people's exertions are not alike, that they go in separate directions, and then it counts two types (the one who gives and guards himself / the one who is miserly and counts himself beyond need). That is, there the separateness lies in the quality of the striving.
When you set the two verses side by side a movement becomes visible: in this world what was separate was the striving; on that day what is separate becomes people themselves. An invisible parting turns into a visible ordering. People who walked the same street, sat at the same table and could not be told apart from one another are, on that day, parted according to where their striving has placed them.
The root's other occurrences confirm this core as well: "Their hearts are utterly divided" (al-Ḥashr 59/14 — qulūbuhum shattā, that is, a community that looks united being inwardly split); "plants of various kinds" (Ṭāhā 20/53).
One more contrast. In the next sūra the horses "plunge into the midst of a gathering (جَمْع)" (al-ʿĀdiyāt 100/5). Jamʿ — assembling, coming together; the exact opposite of ashtāt. Al-Zilzāl works by scattering, al-ʿĀdiyāt by plunging into a gathering.
The verb is passive: li-yuraw — "so that it may be shown to them". The verse does not say "so that they may see" (li-yaraw).
The difference matters. Seeing can be a matter of choice; being shown is not. A person can choose not to look, but he cannot choose not to see what is placed before him.
This is the very same distinction that was treated in the section on Sūrat al-Takāthur: knowledge depends on choice, seeing does not. There the sūra was moving from knowing to seeing; here seeing is built as passive from the start.
A note on the variant reading: it is transmitted that this verb is also read in the active — li-yaraw, "so that they may see". The direction of the meaning changes, the ruling stays the same. Since I cannot state with certainty to which imām it belongs, I give no name.
The verse does not say "the recompense of their deeds", "the register of their deeds", "the punishment of their deeds". It says their deeds.
| View | Explanation |
|---|---|
| The deeds themselves are seen | What was done is somehow made visible; a person watches his own act |
| The registers of deeds are shown | The record is shown; what is meant by "deed" is its written form |
| The recompense of the deeds is shown | A figure; the cause is said and the effect is meant |
- "On the day when every soul finds present whatever good it did, and whatever evil it did…" (Āl ʿImrān 3/30). The verb is "finds", and the object is the deed itself.
- "The book is placed before them… 'Woe to us, what a book is this! It has left out nothing small or great but has counted it all up,' they say. And they find present before them what they did." (al-Kahf 18/49). The last sentence of the verse is also striking: there is both a book and the deeds themselves being present.