al-Raḥmān 55:39 commentary

55/39

فَيَوْمَئِذٍ لَّا يُسْـَٔلُ عَن ذَنۢبِهِۦٓ إِنسٌ وَلَا جَآنٌّ

Fa-yawmaʾidhin lā yusʾalu ʿan dhanbihi insun wa lā jānn

"On that day neither man nor jinn is questioned about his sin."

A question: "will there be no questioning on that day?"

This verse looks as though it conflicts with other verses of the Qurʾān, and the matter has been debated since the classical period.

For the Qurʾān also says explicitly that there will be questioning:

"By your Lord, We shall question them all about what they used to do." (al-Ḥijr 15/92-93)

And there is another verse running in the same direction as this one:

"The guilty are not questioned about their sins." (al-Qaṣaṣ 28/78)

The explanations given:

Explanation	What it says
Two different kinds of question	What is not asked is the question of gaining information (who did what); what is asked is the question of rebuke and reckoning. The first is not needed, since it is already known
Two different times of the day	That day has long stages; at one stage there is questioning, at another there is not
They are not asked because they are recognised	The next verse says this: "The guilty are known by their marks." One who is recognised is not asked his identity

The third explanation is the strongest in point of word order and comes out of the text itself: the thirty-ninth verse says "he is not questioned", the forty-first says "they are known by their marks". Even though the two are separated by two consecutive refrains, they are parts of the same scene.

The inclination in this commentary is towards the third explanation, and it is not binding. The first explanation is widespread in the classical sources too and is not struck out.

A comparison with al-Mursalāt

A very similar matter was treated in the section on al-Mursalāt, and the explanations given there are worth recalling here. The verse there was: "This is the day on which they do not speak; nor are they permitted to offer excuses" (77/35-36).

The work the two verses do is not the same, and the difference matters:

	al-Mursalāt 77/35-36	al-Raḥmān 55/39
What is prevented	Their speaking	Their being questioned
Who is silent	The guilty	The questioning party
Its cause	That no permission is given	That there is no need for a question

In al-Mursalāt the guilty cannot speak. In al-Raḥmān the guilty is not asked.

And read together the two produce a silence: on the one side no permission to answer, on the other no need to ask.

I record this as my own reading. The wording of the two verses is in the text.

إِنسٌ وَلَا جَآنٌّ — the indefinite form

Both words are indefinite: insun, jānnun — "a man", "a jinn". There is no definite article.

And an indefinite coming with a negation conveys comprehensiveness in Arabic: "no man and no jinn at all."

The ruling is therefore without exception.

And note the order: here man comes first. In the thirty-third verse the jinn came first. The sūra does not fix the order.