يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ ٱتَّقُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ وَلْتَنظُرْ نَفْسٌ مَّا قَدَّمَتْ لِغَدٍ وَٱتَّقُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ خَبِيرٌۢ بِمَا تَعْمَلُونَ
Yā ayyuha'lladhīna āmanu'ttaqullāha wa'ltanẓur nafsun mā qaddamat li-ghad, wa'ttaqullāh, innallāha Khabīrun bimā taʿmalūn
"O you who believe! Guard yourselves against God. And let a soul look to what it has sent ahead for tomorrow. Guard yourselves against God. God is aware of what you do."
What was recounted from the eleventh verse to the seventeenth was about a third person: nāfaqū, yaqūlūna, lā yuqātilūnakum. The text was watching a community from outside.
This is the first direct address in the sūra set up with a nidāʾ (a calling out). And its place is meaningful: it comes immediately after the coming apart of the hypocrites has been recounted. That is, the moment the text finishes what it is recounting about somebody else, it turns to the one addressed.
I think this is a way of reading, and I record it as my own inference: at the end of a section in which somebody else's fault has been recounted, it is natural for the reader to feel himself safe, because the one recounted is not he. The verse steps in at exactly that point.
The command is repeated twice in the same verse, with a single sentence coming in between. For a short verse this is a striking density.
تَقْوَىٰ — Root: و-ق-ي. The concrete sense of the root is to protect, to make into a shield. Wiqāya — the barrier that protects a thing from harm. From the same root tuqāt (guarding oneself); and the picture the lexicographers give is this: the person puts something between himself and the thing that does harm.
That is, in the root of the language taqwā is not a fear but a work of protecting. Fear is the cause that makes the protecting happen; the word itself names the work that is done.
This distinction shows why rendering the word in English as "the fear of God" falls short. The word is not "to fear God" but "to put oneself under protection" — and what one is protected from is understood from the context.
The sentence between the two commands matters: wa'ltanẓur nafsun mā qaddamat li-ghad. That is, the command of taqwā surrounds a work of looking. Command → look → command.
This arrangement says something about what sort of thing taqwā is: not an abstract state but a work of inspection. And inspection is done by looking.
The first: the mood of the imperative. Wa'ltanẓur — the لْ at its head is the lām al-amr, which forms a third-person imperative. That is, the verse does not say "look"; it says "let it look".
While what comes before and after the sentence is in the second person plural (ittaqū, taʿmalūn), the imperative in the middle slides to the third person singular. There is a shift in the address.
The effect of this shift is this: had it been said directly "you look", the addressee could have gone on the defensive. When "let a soul look" is said, the sentence becomes a sentence of rule — it points at nobody, but it leaves nobody outside either.
The indefiniteness here does not perform takthīr but taqsīm: it divides a community into single individuals. An accounting is not seen collectively. And the singular shows that the business cannot be handed over to anyone else.
نَفْس — Root: ن-ف-س. From the same root nafas (breath) and tanaffus. The sense the root carries is a thing's own self, its essence, its inside; in Arabic nafsuhū means "his very self".
And let us record in advance that the word will come back in the next verse: in verse 19, ansāhum anfusahum — "He made them forget themselves". The two verses are built on two states of the same word: the soul that looks / the soul that is forgotten.
نَظَر — Root: ن-ظ-ر. To look with the eye. But the second use of the root in Arabic is to wait: intiẓār, naẓira (he gave a respite), anẓirnī (give me a respite).
The two senses come together at one point: to look is to hold the eye on something; and to wait is to hold time on something. In both there is a fixing upon one direction.
And the verb here is not the verb of ruʾya (seeing). The verse does not say "let it see", it says "let it look". Ruʾya is a result, naẓar is a work — looking is something a person can do; seeing either happens as a result of looking or does not.
The root ق-د-م. The concrete centre of the root is the foot: qadam. From this taqdīm — to put a thing in front, to send it on ahead; qadīm — that which comes before; qudūm — arrival (coming to the front).
تَقْدِيم here sets up a picture of a journey: a person is going somewhere, and before he goes he sends something on ahead. What waits for him there when he arrives is what he sent.
This picture is set up with the same verb in other places in the Qurʾān too. At al-Baqara 2/110 the same pattern occurs: wa mā tuqaddimū li-anfusikum min khayrin tajidūhu ʿindallāh — "whatever good you send ahead for yourselves, you will find it with God." The same structure is at al-Muzzammil 73/20 as well.
And the tense of the verb matters: qaddamat — past tense. What is to be looked at is not what will be done but what has been done. The verse makes one look not forward but back; but the reason for looking back is ahead.
The verse does not say "for the hereafter". It says "for tomorrow". And ghad is indefinite: li-ghadin, "for a tomorrow".
The first, bringing near. Ākhira is a distant and a large word; tomorrow is a word taken from a person's daily speech, a word one can take hold of. By naming the great thing with a small and near word, the verse removes the distance.
The second, the indefiniteness. A "tomorrow" left indefinite leaves the time indefinite as well. A tomorrow of which it is not said when it is, is a tomorrow that may be at any moment.
This must be separated out plainly: it is widely said in the classical commentaries that the verse means the hereafter by ghad, and the context supports it (the following verses pass to the distinction of the garden and the fire). But the word itself has been left general, and the reading of that breadth as covering tomorrow in this world too is my preference; it is not a binding interpretation.
The root خ-ب-ر. The sense of the root recorded by the lexicographers is to know the inner face, the hidden side, of a thing. Khabr — knowledge; but knowledge that comes not from the surface but from inside.
The use of the root having to do with the soil is also transmitted: khabīr is used as well of the man who ploughs the soil and knows what is under it. I transmit this explanation in the form in which the lexicographers record it; I do not present it as a definite etymological ruling.
The root has been treated in two places in this commentary before: at al-Zilzāl 99/4 the earth gives its akhbār, at al-ʿĀdiyāt 100/11 the Lord is Khabīr. Three verses set up the same idea: what is known is not what is visible from outside.
And that this verse-ending should sit on this verse is striking. The verse commands a self-inspection: let the person look at his own past. The known weakness of self-inspection is that the person is mistaken about himself — a man sees his own intention as better than it is.
The verse-ending closes exactly this gap: the looking itself may fall short, but the record that is looked at does not fall short.