50. Surah Qaf
The Quranic Text & Ali’s Version:
وَجَاءتْ
سَكْرَةُ الْمَوْتِ
بِالْحَقِّ
...
50: 19. And the stupor of death will bring truth (before his eyes):
C4955. What is stupor or unconsciousness to this probationary life will be the opening of the eyes to the next world: for Death is the Gateway between the two. Once through that Gateway man will realise how the things which he neglected or looked upon as remote are the intimate Realities, and the things which seemed to loom large in his eyes in this world were shadows that have fled. The things he wanted to avoid are the things that have really come to pass. Both Good and Evil will realise the Truth now in its intensity.
... ذَلِكَ مَا كُنتَ مِنْهُ تَحِيدُ ﴿١٩﴾
"This was the thing which thou wast trying to escape!"
50: 20. And the Trumpet shall be blown:
C4956. The next stage will be the Judgment, heralded with the blowing of the Trumpet. Every soul will then come forth.
... ذَلِكَ يَوْمُ الْوَعِيدِ ﴿٢٠﴾
that will be the Day whereof warning (had been given).
50: 21. And there will come forth every soul:
... مَّعَهَا سَائِقٌ وَشَهِيدٌ ﴿٢١﴾
with each will be an (angel) to drive, and an (angel) to bear witness.
C4957. Several interpretations are possible, leading to the same truth, that the Judgment will be set up; the Record will be produced; the good and bad deeds will speak for and against; and complete justice will be done, each act leading to its own due fruit.
The (angel) to drive and the (angel) to bear witness may be the Recording Angels of the left and the right (verse 17); or
it may not be angels, but the evil deeds will drive like task-masters, and the good deeds will bear witness for the soul on trial; or
his misused limbs and faculties will drive him to his doom, while his well-used limbs and faculties will witness for him.
50: 22. (It will be said:) "Thou wast heedless of this;
... مِّنْ هَذَا فَكَشَفْنَا عَنكَ غِطَاءكَ فَبَصَرُكَ الْيَوْمَ حَدِيدٌ ﴿٢٢﴾
now have We removed thy veil, and sharp is thy sight this Day!"
C4958. The clearness of vision will now be even greater:
see n. 4955 above.
وَقَالَ
قَرِينُهُ هَذَا
مَا لَدَيَّ
عَتِيدٌ
﴿٢٣﴾
50: 23. And his companion will say: "Here is (his record) ready with me!"
C4959. Qarin: Companion.
If we take No. 1 of the constructions suggested in n. 4957, the Companion will be one of the Recording Angels mentioned above, in verse 21, perhaps the one that drives; or perhaps the third one mentioned in verse 18, for he has the Record ready with him.
If we take any of the other constructions mentioned in n. 4957, it will be the evil deeds or the misused faculties.
In any case it will be the factors on whose testimony his conviction will be based.
Asad’s Version:
50:19 And [then,] the twilight of death brings with it the [full] truth 15 - that [very thing, O man,] from which thou wouldst always look away! –
(50:20) and [in the end] the trumpet [of resurrection] will be blown: that will be the Day of a warning fulfilled.
50:21 And every human being will come forward with [his erstwhile] inner urges and [his] conscious mind,"
(50:22) [and will be told:] "Indeed, unmindful hast thou been of this [Day of Judgment]; but now We have lifted from thee thy veil, and sharp is thy sight today!"
(50:23) And one part 15 of him will say: "This it is that has been ever-present with me!" 16
[[ Asad’s notes:
13 I.e., full insight into one's own self.
14 Lit., "with that which drives (sa'iq) and that which bears witness (shahid)". While the former term evidently circumscribes man's primal urges - and particularly those which drive him into unrestrained self-indulgence and, thus, into sin - the term shahd (rendered by me as "conscious mind") alludes here to the awakening of the deeper layers of maris consciousness, leading to a sudden perception of his own moral reality - the "lifting of the veil" referred to in the next verse - which forces him to "bear witness" against himself (cf 17:14, 24:24, 36:65, 41:20 ff).
1 5 Lit, "his intimate companion" (qarinuhu). The term qarin denotes something that is "connected", "linked" or "intimately associated" with another thing (cf. 41 :25 and 43:36, where qarin is rendered as "[one's] other self"). In the present instance - read together with verse 21 - the term apparently denotes "one part" of man, namely, his awakened moral consciousness.
16 I.e., the sinner's reason will plead that he had always been more or less conscious, and perhaps even critical, of the urges and appetites that drove him into evildoing: but, as is shown in the sequence, this belated and, therefore, morally ineffective rational cognition does not diminish but, rather, enhances the burden of maris guilt.
17 In this instance, as well as in verse 26, the imperative "cast" has the dual form (alqiya). As many classical philologists (and almost all of the commentators) point out, - this is linguistically permissible for the sake of special stress, and is equivalent to an emphatic repetition of the imperative in question. Alternatively, the dual form may be taken as indicative of an actual duality thus addressed: namely, the two manifestations within maris psyche alluded to in verse 1 7 and described in verse
21 as sa'iq and shahid (see note 14 above), both of which, in thefr interaction, are responsible for his spiritual downfall and, hence, for his suffering in the life to come.
18 This relates not merely to the veneration of real or imaginary beings or forces to which one ascribes divine qualities, but also to the "worship" of false values and immoral concepts to which people often adhere with an almost religious fervour.