36.Surah Ya Sin (O Thou Human Being)

The Quranic Text & Ali’s Version:

لِيُنذِرَ مَن كَانَ حَيًّا ...

36: 70.  That it may give admonition to any (who are) alive,

C4016. "Alive", both in English and Arabic, means not only "having physical fife", but having all the active qualities which we associate with life.

In religious language, those who are not responsive to the realities of the spiritual world are no better than those who are dead. The Message of Allah penetrates the hearts of those who are alive in the spiritual sense.

... وَيَحِقَّ الْقَوْلُ عَلَى الْكَافِرِينَ ﴿٧٠﴾

and that the charge may be proved against those who reject (Truth).

C4017. Cf. 28:63.

If people reject Truth and Faith after they have been admonished and warned, the charge against them, of willful rebellion, is proved. They cannot then plead either ignorance or inadvertence.

Asad’s Version:

(36:70) to the end that it may warn everyone who is alive [of heart], and that the word [of God] may bear witness[" against all who deny the truth.

36:69 [Yuksel] We did not teach him poetry, nor does he need it. This is a reminder and a clear Quran.

36:70 To warn those who are alive, and so that the retribution will be deserved by the ingrates.*

036:070 It is an implicit and ironic prophecy of the Quran that the chapter containing the only verse stating that the Quran was revealed to remind the living people, has been dedicated to dead people. Those who follow hadith and sectarian teachings recite this chapter in funerals. In opposition to the Quran, "living" people recite these verses for the dead, who do not hear. According to the Quran, those people are no different than the dead people. A class of people getting paid for reciting a book that they do not appreciate nor understand over the dead people who also do neither, is one of the strangest affairs.