al-Maʿārij 70:43-44

Yawma yakhrujūna mina'l-ajdāthi sirāʿan ka-annahum ilā nuṣubin yūfiḍūn · Khāshiʿatan abṣāruhum tarhaquhum dhillah; dhālika'l-yawmu'lladhī kānū yūʿadūn "The day they come out of the graves in haste, as though they were racing towards a standing stone. Their eyes cast down, humiliation covering them. That is the day they were promised."

Root: ج-د-ث. Jadath — a grave, a tomb. Its plural is أَجْدَاث.

Arabic has several words for a grave: qabr, jadath, ramz, ḍarīḥ. Jadath brings forward the pit aspect of a grave.

The word occurs in three places in the Qurʾān, and all three are in the same scene:

• "With their eyes cast down, they will come out of the graves as though they were scattered locusts." (al-Qamar 54/7)
• "And suddenly they are hastening from their graves to their Lord." (Yāsīn 36/51)
• al-Maʿārij 70/43.

And this verse is strikingly close to al-Qamar 54/7.

Both verses carry the same three elements: cast-down eyes, coming out of the graves, and a simile. The only thing that changes is the simile.

And now we can complete a comparison framed earlier in this commentary.

In the section on al-Qāriʿa, al-Qamar 54/7 was compared with al-Qāriʿa 101/4, and the following was recorded:

"A swarm of locusts goes in a common direction. It has a direction, it has an order; what is fearsome about it is its numbers and its destructiveness. A swarm of moths has no direction. Each goes somewhere else. Al-Qāriʿa chose the second. The sūra's emphasis is not on the crowd but on the loss of direction."

Al-Maʿārij adds a third simile — and that simile says something different from both:

Three similes, three different relations to direction: no direction, a direction, a wrong direction.

And the third is the harshest, because in the first two there was a loss or a crowd; here there is a target, and what the target is is said in the next word.

I record this as my own reading. The wordings of the three verses are data that can be verified; the two-sided comparison in the section on al-Qāriʿa is taken from there and the third link is added here.

And the whole weight of the simile lies in this word.

Root: ن-ص-ب. Naṣaba — to set up, to erect, to raise upright. نُصُب — a thing set up; and in Arabic especially a standing stone, an idol, a stone on which sacrifice is offered.

The word's best-known use in the Qurʾān is this:

"O you who believe! Wine, gambling, standing stones and divining arrows are an abomination of Satan's work." (al-Māʾida 5/90 — wa'l-anṣāb)

And: "[Forbidden to you is] what has been slaughtered on standing stones." (al-Māʾida 5/3)

So nuṣub is the standing stone of pre-Islamic Arabia around which people gathered, at which sacrifice was offered, around which circuits were made.

There are two readings, and both occur in the sources:

The first reading makes a stronger link with the content of the sūra, and the ground is this:

Forty-five verses earlier the sūra had described the deniers as gathered around the Prophet: "craning their necks towards you, from the right and from the left, in clumps."

And now the same people come out of their graves as though racing to a standing stone.

The two scenes share the same bodily movement: gathering and running. In the world they ran to one place, on that day they run to another — and the movement is the same.

And one detail: the verb in the thirty-sixth verse was مُهْطِعِين, and that word is used in a scene of the resurrection in al-Qamar 54/8 as well: "hastening to the caller". So the choice of word already linked the two scenes.

I record this as my own reading, and I set down one qualification: there is disagreement over the meaning of nuṣub, and the "goal/banner" reading is also valid. Nor do I claim that the verse intends the link between the two scenes. What I record is that the two verses describe the same bodily movement.

A note on the variant readings. It is transmitted that the word is also read as نَصْب (naṣb); on that reading the sense approaches the verbal noun "the setting up". Since I cannot say with certainty which reading belongs to which imām, I give no names. It makes no great difference to the sense.

Root: و-ف-ض. Awfaḍa — to hurry, to run fast. The word occurs only here in the Qurʾān.

The lexicographers describe īfāḍ as "a fast and flurried gait"; there is haste and a disorder in it.

And the verse had already used the word سِرَاعًا (in haste). So speed is announced twice: once with a circumstantial word, once with a verb.

سِرَاع — Root: س-ر-ع. The plural of sarīʿ (fast). It occurs in the Qurʾān in the construct sarīʿu'l-ḥisāb (swift in reckoning) as well.

Root: خ-ش-ع. This root was treated in the section on al-Baqara 2/45, where the following was recorded:

"Root: to soften, to be lowered, to bend. … Khushūʿ is the breaking of hardness, the softening of the shell, becoming able to take in what comes."

And Fuṣṣilat 41/39 was given as evidence: "You see the earth barren (khāshiʿa); when We send down water upon it, it stirs and swells."

I do not repeat it.

What is to be added here is this: the same root occurs in two different places with two opposite values — one in this sūra, the other in al-Muʾminūn, which is al-Maʿārij's parallel:

The same root, in two opposite places.

And the difference is this: the khushūʿ in al-Muʾminūn is chosen — a person bows in prayer. The khushūʿ in al-Maʿārij is compelled — the eyes fall on that day.

So the picture the Qurʾān draws is this: bowing is either chosen or undergone. The measure recorded for the scales in the section on al-Qāriʿa and for seeing in the section on al-Takāthur works here for bowing.

I record this as my own reading. The wordings of the two verses and the shared root are data that can be verified.

And the link with al-Ghāshiya 88/2: "Some faces on that day will be cast down" (wujūhun yawmaʾidhin khāshiʿa). This verse was treated in the section on al-Ghāshiya; there what was cast down was faces, here it is eyes.

Grammar. Khāshiʿatan is in the accusative and is a circumstantial qualifier (the state of yakhrujūna in verse 43). The reading مَرْفُوع is also transmitted. I give no imām's name.

تَرْهَقُ — Root: ر-ه-ق. Rahiqa — to overtake and cover, to envelop, to settle upon. Irhāq — to compel, to load with more than one can bear.

And this verb occurs in a verse treated in this commentary:

"[On that day some faces] will be covered by a darkness." (ʿAbasa 80/41 — tarhaquhā qatara)

This verse was treated in the section on ʿAbasa; I do not repeat it.

Let us set the two verses side by side:

The same verb, two different coverings. In ʿAbasa a physical darkness, in al-Maʿārij a condition.

And the choice of the verb is meaningful: rahiqa conveys something that comes from outside and covers over a thing. That is, humiliation is not a feeling that arises from within a person; it is something put on him.

I record this as an observation about the word.

ذِلَّة — Root: ذ-ل-ل. Dhull — lowness, submission, loss of standing. Its opposite is ʿizza.

And the root has an interesting side: the same root gives both the negative dhilla and the positive dhalūl (docile, submissive — especially of a mount). "He made the earth submissive to you" (al-Mulk 67/15 — dhalūlā).

So the root is not negative in itself: it conveys submission. Its value depends on to whom and how one submits.

I record this as an observation about the word; the two uses of the root are plain in the Qurʾān.

The last sentence of the sūra. And it is a repetition.

The forty-second verse ended thus: "…until they meet their day which they are promised" (yawmahumu'lladhī yūʿadūn).

The forty-fourth verse repeats the same expression — with one difference:

Between the two verses, across a span of two verses, the time changes.

In the forty-second verse the promise was continuing; in the forty-fourth it had continued. That is, between two sentences the sūra moves the reader over to the side on which the promise has been fulfilled.

And the demonstrative changes as well: first "their day", then "that is the day." The far demonstrative makes the event visible to the eye.

I record this as my own reading. The tenses of the two verses are data that can be verified.

The sūra had opened with a question: "When?"

And its last sentence is: "That is the day."

The question and the answer stand at the two ends of the sūra. And the answer is the whole of the forty-three verses in between: the source of the punishment, the difference of measure, the scene itself, the diagnosis, the list, and the final scene.

So the sūra answers the question not by giving a date but by showing how the one who asked it will meet that day.

I record this as my own reading. The opening and closing sentences of the sūra are in the text.