يُنَبَّؤُا۟ ٱلْإِنسَٰنُ يَوْمَئِذٍۭ بِمَا قَدَّمَ وَأَخَّرَ
Yunabbaʾu'l-insānu yawmaʾidhin bimā qaddama wa akhkhar "On that day man is informed of all that he sent ahead and all that he left behind."
The distinction the lexicographers draw is this: خَبَر (khabar) is any kind of report; نَبَأ (nabaʾ) is a report that is important, consequential, of great benefit. Every nabaʾ is a report, but not every report is a nabaʾ.
From the same root comes نَبِىّ (nabī) — the one who brings news, or the one to whom news is brought. (Its being related instead to the root nabwa, "high ground", is also transmitted; the lexicographers differ between the two derivations and I state no preference here.)
The pattern: تَفْعِيل (nabbaʾa), passive (yunabbaʾu). Form II here conveys going into detail: not a summary report but item-by-item notification. And the verb is passive: who gives the report is not said.
What the verse does looks like a transfer of information. But the next verse will turn this around: the one who is informed already knows.
The root ق-د-م: to go in front, to be ahead. And at the concrete centre of the root is an organ: قَدَم (qadam) — the foot. The foot is the part of the body that goes forward. From the same root, taqdīm (putting forward), muqaddima (what is placed in front), qadīm (what is earlier, old).
The root أ-خ-ر: to leave behind, to put off to later. From the same root, ākhir (last), ākhira (what comes after), taʾkhīr (deferral), ukhrā (the other one).
| Reading | Explanation | Ground |
|---|---|---|
| What he did and what he did not do | Qaddama: the deeds he performed. Akhkhara: what he ought to have done and left off, deferring it | The opposition of the two verbs; omission counts as a deed too |
| What he did first and what he did later | The whole of his life from beginning to end; no period is left outside | The comprehensiveness of the pattern: name the two ends and the middle fills in |
| What he did himself and what he left behind him | Qaddama: his own deed. Akhkhara: the effect he left behind him, a good or a bad precedent | Yāsīn 36/12: "We write what they did and their traces" |
All three readings are in the classical sources and they do not exclude one another. The third is worth recording separately because it finds direct support from the Qurʾān:
إِنَّا نَحْنُ نُحْىِ ٱلْمَوْتَىٰ وَنَكْتُبُ مَا قَدَّمُوا۟ وَءَاثَٰرَهُمْ — "It is We who give life to the dead, and We write what they sent ahead and the traces they left." (Yāsīn 36/12)
The same verb (qaddamū), the same structure. And that verse begins with the expression نُحْىِ ٱلْمَوْتَىٰ ("We give life to the dead") — with which Sūrat al-Qiyāma will end exactly (75/40: an yuḥyiya'l-mawtā). The two verses hold the same subject from two ends.
Verse 5: li-yafjura أَمَامَهُ — he wants to break open what lies ahead of him. Verse 13: bimā قَدَّمَ wa akhkhar — he is informed of what he sent ahead.
In the fifth verse the man wanted to open up the space ahead of him — to empty out the future. In the thirteenth he is informed of the things he has sent ahead of him.
So the space he thought was empty was not empty. While the man was labouring to clear his front, he was sending things on ahead of him.
I record this link as my own reading; that the two verses use the same language of space is a datum of the text.