34.Surah Saba'

The Quranic Text & Ali’s Version:

وَحِيلَ بَيْنَهُمْ وَبَيْنَ مَا يَشْتَهُونَ ...

34:54 [Ali]. And between them and their desires, is placed a barrier,

C3866. What they desire is to suppress Truth and to indulge in the satisfaction of their own evil, selfish motives.

They will be baulked in both, and that itself will be their anguish and punishment. That has always been the law in the eternal struggle between Right and Wrong. All partisans of such narrow cliques have always suffered the same fate.

... كَمَا فُعِلَ بِأَشْيَاعِهِم مِّن قَبْلُ...

as was done in the past with their partisans:

C3867. Note that verses 51-54 are a powerful description of the conflict between right and wrong, and may be understood in many meanings.

1. The description applies to the position in the final Hereafter, as compared with the position in this life.

2. It applies to the position of triumphant Islam in Madinah and later as compared with the position of persecuted Islam in its early days in Makkah.

3. It applies to the reversal of the position of right and wrong at various phases of the world's history,

4. or of individual history.

... إِنَّهُمْ كَانُوا فِي شَكٍّ مُّرِيبٍ ﴿٥٤﴾

for they were indeed in suspicious (disquieting) doubt.

C3868. Cf. 14:9, and see n. 1884.

Asad’s Version:

34:54

And so, a barrier will be set between them and all that they had [ever] desired," as will be done to such of their kind as lived before their time: for, behold, they [too were lost in doubt amounting to suspicion. 67

66 Thus, the impossibility of attaining to the fulfilment of any of their desires - whether positive or negative - sums up, as it were, the suffering of the damned in the life to come.

67 I.e., a suspicion that all moral postulates were but meant to deprive them of what they considered to be the "legitimate advantages" of life in this world.

34:54 [Yuksel] They will be separated from what they had desired, as was done for their counterparts before. They have been in grave doubt.