يَوْمَ تُبْلَى ٱلسَّرَآئِرُ
Yawma is in the accusative, and the grammarians differ over what it attaches to: to the verbal noun rajʿihī in the preceding verse (the return takes place on that day), or to la-qādir, or to an elided verb ("remember that day").
The difference in meaning is small. The commonest solution is the first: it states the time of the operation of bringing back. The same discussion arose in Sūrat al-Qāriʿa over the expression yawma yakūnu'l-nās; the solutions recorded there hold here as well.
Root: ب-ل-و / ب-ل-ي. This root was treated at al-Baqara 2/49 on the occasion of the word balāʾ. What was recorded there was this: the root means to try, to test by wearing down; in Turkish the borrowed word belâ has narrowed the sense to calamity alone, whereas in Arabic it takes in testing by good as well — "We test you with evil and with good, as a trial" (al-Anbiyāʾ 21/35).
- بَلِيَ ٱلثَّوْبُ — the garment grew old, wore out, went to rags.
- بِلًى (bilan) — decay, wearing out.
- أَبْلَى — to wear out; and also "to test".
The link between the two senses is this: the way to test a thing is to wear it down. The soundness of a cloth is found out by pulling at it; the strength of a rope by straining it. Testing is a wearing-away carried out in order to find the limit of endurance. Arabic has kept these two ideas in a single root.
Now go back to the verse: the verb is passive (tublā) and its subject is sarāʾir. That is, the hidden things are tried, probed, tested — and as a result of the testing what they are comes out.
It is most often rendered in English as "are brought to light". That is correct, but it misses how the word works: the verse does not say "are opened" or "are shown". It says are probed. That is, it is not merely that a veil is lifted; they are put through an operation, and the result of that operation comes out.
Root: س-ر-ر. Its singular is سَرِيرَة: what a person keeps inside and does not let out. Intention, motive, the real thought.
- سِرّ (sirr) — the thing that is hidden. Turkish sır, "secret", comes straight from here.
- إِسْرَار (isrār) — to hide, to whisper. In the Qurʾān: "Whether you keep your speech secret or speak it aloud, He knows what is in the breasts" (al-Mulk 67/13).
- سَرِيرَة — what is kept inside.
- سُرُور (surūr) — joy.
- سَرِير (sarīr) — couch, throne, divan. The Turkish sedir, "divan", is related to this word.
The last two entries may look surprising. The lexicographers connect them thus: surūr (joy) is what is born inside and shows in the face — the coming out of what was hidden; sarīr, in turn, was named as a place of joy and of ease.
These connections are of the kind the lexicographers set up, and they cannot be presented as a settled etymological verdict. But they carry a side worth recording: the relation between concealment and joy has been made within the language itself. What a person hides most is most often what he most rejoices in, or wants to rejoice in.
The verse does not say "the day when the deeds are weighed". Sūrat al-Qāriʿa set up a balance; here there is no balance.
Nor does it say "the day when the records are opened"; there is no scene of a book such as those in Sūrat al-Inshiqāq and Sūrat al-Ḥāqqa.
What is chosen is sarāʾir: the side of which no record is kept, which is not seen from outside, which no one but its owner knows.
The reason for this is bound up with the fourth verse of the sūra. There was a ḥāfiẓ there — one who guards and who records. What is recorded is behaviour. But beneath behaviour there is one more layer, and that layer cannot be recorded, because it is not visible. The sūra says that the reckoning reaches to that layer too.
The nearest counterpart of this verse is in Sūrat al-ʿĀdiyāt, and unless the two verses are read together both remain incomplete.
"…and what is in the breasts is sifted out" (al-ʿĀdiyāt 100/10)
In the section on al-ʿĀdiyāt the verb حُصِّلَ was treated in detail. What was recorded there was this: taḥṣīl is the taking of the kernel out of its husk; it is an image from the threshing floor — the wheat is winnowed, the chaff blows away, the grain remains.
| al-ʿĀdiyāt 100/10 | al-Ṭāriq 86/9 | |
|---|---|---|
| Verb | حُصِّلَ — was sifted, was winnowed | تُبْلَى — was probed, was tested |
| The concrete sense of the root | To winnow the threshing and separate the grain out | To wear a cloth and measure how much it holds |
| Object | مَا فِى ٱلصُّدُور — what is in the breasts | ٱلسَّرَآئِر — the hidden things |
| The kind of object | The vessel that holds the content (the breast) | The content of the vessel (what is hidden) |
| The result of the operation | The mixture separates, the kernel remains | The outcome of the testing comes out |
The two verses say the same thing, and say it with an image taken from two different crafts: one from farming, one from weaving.
The point in common is that both are an operation. Neither verse says "is seen" or "is known". Something is done: it is winnowed, it is probed. That is, on that day what is hidden does not merely come to light; it is put through a test, and what it really is gets settled.
And there is a difference worth recording: in al-ʿĀdiyāt, as a result of the sifting the kernel remains — that is, something is left behind. In al-Ṭāriq, as a result of the probing, whether or not it holds becomes plain. One is a separating, the other a testing. Together, the two give the two stages of a reckoning.
This comparison is a link I set up; the root senses of the two words are given in the lexicons in this form, but it is I who set up the relation between them. I do not present it as a transmitted report.
A third expression of the same idea is in Sūrat Ṭāhā, and it uses directly the same root as verse 9 of al-Ṭāriq:
"…He knows the secret and what is more hidden than it" (Ṭāhā 20/7)
Al-sirr and akhfā. That is, concealment too has its degrees: what you hide and know you are hiding; and what you do not know you are hiding. The second is most often the more decisive — the motive you do not tell yourself.