Sūrat al-Wāqiʿa · Āyāt 57–74

What the passage says

This passage is one sustained argument for the Resurrection, aimed at those who denied it. It works by pointing to things people already see God doing.

It opens: We created you — so why will you not affirm the raising (v.57)? If God made you the first time, why deny that He can make you again? Then come a series of rhetorical challenges, each asking "is it you, or We?"

The first sign is the human seed. Have you considered what you emit? (v.58) — the sperm you cast into the wombs. Is it you who create it, or are We the Creator? (v.59). You cannot turn that drop into a person; only God can — and the One who can do that can raise the dead.

Next is death itself. We have ordained death among you, and We are not to be outstripped (v.60): death is something God decrees by His wisdom, not a defeat of His power or a victory of overpowering forces. This is so that We may replace you with your likes and recreate you in a realm you do not know (v.61) — generation succeeding generation, and finally a second, unfamiliar existence beyond this one. You have known the first genesis — so why do you not take heed? (v.62): you witnessed your own first creation, so let it remind you of the next.

Then three things people live by. The crop: Have you considered what you sow? (v.63) — is it you who make it grow, or are We the grower? (v.64). You scatter the seed, but you do not make it grow. If We wished, We would turn it to chaff (v.65), dry useless debris, and you would be left stunned (v.65), saying, "Indeed we have suffered loss!" (v.66), "No — we are deprived!" (v.67).

The water: Have you considered the water you drink? (v.68) — is it you who send it down from the rain-cloud, or is it We? (v.69). If We wished, We could make it bitter (v.70), undrinkably salt — so why do you not give thanks? (v.70).

The fire: Have you considered the fire you kindle? (v.71) — was it you who made its tree grow, or were We the grower? (v.72). The Arabs struck their fire from the wood of desert trees, yet none of them grew that tree. It was We who made it a reminder and a benefit for the desert-dwellers (v.73) — a reminder of the greater Fire, and a provision for travelers.

The passage closes by turning from the deniers to the Prophet: So glorify the Name of your Lord, the All-supreme (v.74).

Convergence — where the six agree

• All six read these verses as a single chain of proof for the Resurrection built on one logic: the God who originated you can re-create you. Ṭūsī, Ṭabarsī, and the Enlightening Commentary all state it plainly — He who forms a child from a drop, or grows a crop from a tiny grain, can restore the dead; Ṭabāṭabāʾī (al-Mīzān) develops it into a formal demonstration, and the Enlightening Commentary anchors it in the parallel verse "He shall give life to them Who created them for the first time" (36:78–79).

• The four classical sources gloss the difficult words in concert: ḥuṭām as dried, useless chaff; al-muzn as the rain-cloud; ujāj as intensely bitter or briny water; and the fire struck from the desert trees markh and ʿafār — citing the Arab proverb that "every tree has fire, but the markh and ʿafār are the most generous of it" (Ṭūsī and Ṭabarsī).

• On "is it you who make it grow, or are We the grower?", Ṭabarsī, al-Baḥrānī, and Ṭabāṭabāʾī (and the Enlightening Commentary) all transmit the Prophetic correction: let no one say "I cultivated"; let him say "I sowed" — because God is the true Grower. al-Baḥrānī adds, on the authority of al-Ṣādiq, a supplication to say while sowing: "O God, I have sown, and You are the Grower."

• On the closing verse, Ṭūsī, Ṭabarsī, Ṭabāṭabāʾī, and the Enlightening Commentary all transmit that when "So glorify the Name of your Lord, the All-supreme" was revealed, the Prophet said: "Put it in your bowing" — the origin of saying subḥāna rabbiya al-ʿaẓīm in the rukūʿ of prayer.

• Several sources note that "the desert-dwellers" (al-muqwīn) means those who profit from the fire — Ṭūsī, Ṭabarsī, and al-Baḥrānī read it as travelers alighting in the empty waste, and al-Qummī and al-Baḥrānī gloss it plainly as "the needy."

Divergence — where they differ

The sources agree on the core meaning, so the differences here are mostly of depth and emphasis rather than genuine conflict.

• On amthālakum in v.61 ("your likes"), there are two readings. The dominant one, stressed by Ṭabāṭabāʾī, is replacement — one generation or community succeeding another, so that death is "a transfer from abode to abode, not annihilation." A secondary reading, noted by Ṭūsī and Ṭabarsī (citing al-Zajjaj and al-Dahhak), takes it as transformed forms — the believer raised in the fairest shape, the unbeliever in the foulest, even as apes or swine. Ṭabāṭabāʾī judges the replacement-reading "fuller."

• On tafakkahūn in v.65 (when the crop is ruined), Ṭūsī and Ṭabarsī report two glosses from the early authorities: marvelling and astonishment (Ibn ʿAbbās, Mujāhid, Qatāda), or regret and grief over the lost outlay (al-Hasan, ʿIkrima, Qatāda) — with Ṭabarsī adding a third, that the farmers blame one another.

• Ṭabāṭabāʾī (al-Mīzān) uniquely mounts a philosophical defense of bodily resurrection — that personhood resides in the soul, which does not perish at death, so the raised person is "the very man, as aged Zayd is young Zayd" — and explicitly rebuts al-Zamakhsharī and Rūḥ al-Maʿānī for treating the verse as proof of juristic analogy.

• The Enlightening Commentary uniquely supplies a scientific register (spermatozoa counts, the plant as a "laboratory," the water cycle) and uniquely transmits the report of Imam ʿAlī, who in prayer answered each rhetorical question aloud — "Yes, You are the Creator, O Lord!" — along with the Prophetic saying that worldly fire "is one part of the seventy parts of Hellfire."

• al-Qummī is the most sparing of all, glossing only the sperm, the kindled fire, the reminder of the Fire of Resurrection, and "the needy."

Each scholar's full text is in the source panels below.