وَتَرَىٰ كُلَّ أُمَّةٍ جَاثِيَةً كُلُّ أُمَّةٍ تُدْعَىٰٓ إِلَىٰ كِتَٰبِهَا · هَٰذَا كِتَٰبُنَا يَنطِقُ عَلَيْكُم بِٱلْحَقِّ إِنَّا كُنَّا نَسْتَنسِخُ مَا كُنتُمْ تَعْمَلُونَ
Wa tarā kulla ummatin jāthiya · Kullu ummatin tudʿā ilā kitābihā · Hādhā kitābunā yanṭiqu ʿalaykum bi'l-ḥaqq · Innā kunnā nastansikhu mā kuntum taʿmalūn
"You will see every community kneeling. Every community will be called to its own book. 'This book of Ours speaks against you with the truth. We were having recorded what you were doing.'"
The sense the lexicographers give: to fall upon the knees. Jathā — he knelt. From the root juthwa (a heap, a pile of stones) is also recorded.
This posture of sitting is worth recording: in Arab culture kneeling is the posture of waiting and of reckoning — in court, or the bearing of one who awaits a decision. It is not a posture of ease; it is the state of being ready to rise but not yet risen.
And the verse gives this state to every community — without distinction, all of them. The distinction will be made at the next step, when the books are opened.
The choice of verb is striking: the book does not "write" or "show", it speaks. And the particle is ʿalaykum — "against you". In Arabic ʿalā here conveys being to one's detriment.
I record this as my own reading: a document is normally read; the party reading it interprets it. The verse removes this intermediary: the document itself speaks. The distance between the document and whatever might be said about it is thereby closed.
The senses of the root: to put one thing in the place of another (naskh), and to transfer a writing to another place (istinsākh — to make a copy of it). The word nuskha comes from here.
The pattern is Form X: nastansikh. The lexicographers record that the pattern here has the sense of "to have recorded, to have a copy made" — that is, the act is not direct but by way of having it written down.
The picture in the word is worth recording: the act is described as transferring what happens into a copy. The original is the life lived; the book is its copy. For this reason the book in verse 29 is set down not as a document brought in from outside but as a copy of what was lived.