وَأَنذِرْهُمْ يَوْمَ ٱلْءَازِفَةِ إِذِ ٱلْقُلُوبُ لَدَى ٱلْحَنَاجِرِ كَٰظِمِينَ · يَعْلَمُ خَآئِنَةَ ٱلْأَعْيُنِ وَمَا تُخْفِى ٱلصُّدُورُ
"Warn them of the day that draws near: hearts pressed up to the throats, choking them back… God knows the treachery of the eyes and what the breasts conceal."
Root أ-ز-ف: to draw near; and to become straitened. The root was analysed at al-Najm 53/57 (azifati'l-āzifa); I rely on that treatment.
That the word is used as the name of a day is worth recording: that day is named not by what happens on it but by its nearness.
The scene is bodily, and it can be set beside the scene treated at al-Wāqiʿa 56/83: there the soul was pressed up to the ḥulqūm (the throat). Here the hearts are pressed up to the ḥanjara.
| Place | What is pressed up | To where |
|---|---|---|
| al-Wāqiʿa 56/83 | The soul (not named as such) | Al-Ḥulqūm |
| Ghāfir 40/18 | The hearts | Al-Ḥanājir |
Both scenes point to the same region: the place where voice and breath pass. One describes the moment of death, the other the waiting.
كَٰظِمِين — root ك-ظ-م: to tie the mouth of a waterskin, to let nothing inside it out. From this comes the sense "to bury one's anger or pain inside". The word was treated in al-Ḥujurāt.
So the scene is this: the heart has come up, but no sound comes out. A skin filling, and a mouth tied shut.
The root خ-و-ن: to act against a trust, to betray in secret. And the lexicographers dwell on the word's coming in the form khāʾina (a feminine active participle): on one reading it means "the treacherous glance", on another "the treachery of the eyes".
What the word describes is worth recording, and I give it as my own reading: the eye is a person's fastest and most deniable organ. A glance passes and is over; its owner can easily disown it. The verse takes as its measure precisely what can be denied.
And the second half of the sentence completes this: wa mā tukhfi'ṣ-ṣudūr — what the breasts conceal. That is, the one is the smallest trace that leaks out, the other what never leaks at all. Both extremes are covered at once.
The supposition treated at Fuṣṣilat 41/22 is directly connected with this: there it was said, "you supposed that God did not know much of what you were doing". This verse brings the reach of that knowledge down to the level of a glance.