The Heights (Al-Ma'aarej)
In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful
A questioner questioned concerning the doom about to fall 1 The unbelievers-- there is none to avert it-- 2 (A Penalty) from Allah, Lord of the Ways of Ascent. 3 To Him the angels and the Spirit (Gabriel) ascend in a day, the measure of which is fifty thousand years. 4 So be patient with gracious patience. 5 Surely they think it to be far off, 6 While we behold it nigh: 7 The day when the sky will become as molten copper, 8 And the mountains will be like flakes of wool, 9 And no friend will ask concerning his friend. 10 They will be seeing them; the guilty will wish if only he could redeem himself from the punishment of that day, by offering his sons. 11 His wife and his brother, 12 his kin who sheltered him, 13 And all that are in the earth, so that it might save him. 14 No, in truth, it is a Furnace! 15 will strip-off the flesh 16 Calling: "[O Kafir (O disbeliever in Allah, His angels, His Book, His Messengers, Day of Resurrection and in Al-Qadar (Divine Preordainments), O Mushrik (O polytheist, disbeliever in the Oneness of Allah)] (all) such as turn their backs and turn away their faces (from Faith) [picking and swallowing them up from that great gathering of mankind (on the Day of Resurrection) just as a bird picks up a food-grain from the earth with its beak and swallows it up] [Tafsir Al-Qurtubi, Vol. 18, Page 289] 17 and amass [wealth] and thereupon withhold [it from their fellow-men]. 18 ۞ Verily man is formed impatient. 19 When evil toucheth him, he is bewailing. 20 and tight-fisted when good fortune visits him, 21 Not so, however, those who consciously turn towards God in prayer. 22 Those who remain steadfast to their prayer; 23 And in whose wealth there is a right acknowledged 24 For the beggar who asks, and for the unlucky who has lost his property and wealth, (and his means of living has been straitened); 25 and who accept as true the [coming of the] Day of Judgment; 26 And those who fear the displeasure of their Lord,- 27 Lo! the doom of their Lord is that before which none can feel secure - 28 and those who guard their private parts, 29 Except with their wives and the (captives) whom their right hands possess,- for (then) they are not to be blamed, 30 But whoso seeketh more than that, those are they who are transgressors; 31 and those who are faithful to their trusts and to their pledges; 32 And those who are in their testimonies upright 33 and are steadfast in their prayers. 34 Such will be the honoured ones in the Gardens (of Bliss). 35