Sūrah 53 · Āyāt 56–62

Al-Najm 56–62 — A Warner, the Nearing Hour, and the Command to Prostrate

The sura ends where warning must: This is a warner of the former warners (v.56); the imminent draws near — none but God can uncover it (vv.57–58); and then the sharp rebuke — Do you marvel at this discourse, and laugh and not weep, while you are heedless (sāmidūn)? (vv.59–61) — sealed by the command So prostrate to God and worship (v.62).

'A warner of the former warners.' The Arabic sources offer two axes. Al-Ṭabarsī, al-Ṭūsī and al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī take this as either the Prophet — of the same line as the messengers before him, though the last — or the Qurʾān, of the kind of the scrolls of Abraham and Moses. Al-Qummī and al-Baḥrānī preserve the distinctive Imāmī gloss that the Prophet warned creation already in the primordial covenant (al-dharr al-awwal), and al-Baḥrānī adds al-Ṣādiq's declaration (via al-Mufaḍḍal) of Muḥammad's pre-eminence over every prophet before and after — rendered here as attributed. The Enlightening Commentary reads it plainly as placing the Prophet in the succession of the earlier warners.

The nearing Hour. On azifat al-āzifa, all agree the Resurrection has drawn near; al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī notes al-āzifa is a Qurʾānic name of the Hour (40:18), and al-Ṭabarsī explains it is called 'the near' because all that is coming is near. On none but God can uncover it (kāshifa), the sources agree that none but God can lift its terrors or disclose its time (cf. 7:187), parsing kāshifa either as 'a disclosing soul' or as a verbal noun.

Laughter, weeping, and prostration. On do you marvel… and laugh and not weep, while you are sāmidūn, al-Ṭabarsī and al-Ṭūsī gloss sāmidūn as heedless and diverted — al-Ṭūsī and al-Ṭabarsī noting the sense of amusement, even singing to drown out the Qurʾān (ʿIkrima). Al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī turns it to conscience: before a Lord in whom all ends and a Hour none can lift, one ought to weep, not mock; and he cites the report from Ibn ʿAbbās that after this verse the Prophet was never again seen laughing — a note the Enlightening Commentary echoes from Tafsīr Furqān. Finally, on fa-sjudū li-llāhi wa-ʿbudū, al-Ṭabarsī and al-Ṭūsī agree with their school that this closing prostration is obligatory (one of the ʿazāʾim), the imperative entailing obligation — so the sura that opened by vindicating revelation ends by summoning its hearers to the ground in worship of the God to whom everything returns.