إِن تَدْعُوهُمْ لَا يَسْمَعُوا۟ دُعَآءَكُمْ وَلَوْ سَمِعُوا۟ مَا ٱسْتَجَابُوا۟ لَكُمْ وَيَوْمَ ٱلْقِيَٰمَةِ يَكْفُرُونَ بِشِرْكِكُمْ
"If you call upon them they do not hear your call; and even if they heard, they could not answer you. And on the Day of Resurrection they reject your having associated them."
| Stage | Expression |
|---|---|
| 1 | Lā yasmaʿū — they do not hear |
| 2 | Wa law samiʿū ma'stajābū — even if they heard, they could not answer |
| 3 | Yakfurūna bi-shirkikum — in the end they reject |
The second stage is worth recording: the verse acts as though it had granted the first possibility, and takes one step further. That is: it closes off by itself every place where an objection might be raised.
The same threefold sequence was treated in al-Aḥqāf at 46/5-6 (the inability to answer, the being unaware, the turning enemy in the end). The two sūras build the same structure, and the record treated in al-Aḥqāf — that the relationship was never established at all — holds here too.
The block closes with a sentence about the source of knowledge. And the word is khabīr — root خ-ب-ر: to know the inner face of a thing. The lexicographers record the root's connection with the sense of "ploughing the soil and seeing what is beneath it".