Sura-50 [Qaf Mecca 34]
The Quranic Text & Ali’s version:
50:2. But they wonder ...
C4941. In a sense their wonder is natural: do we wonder at the glorious sun? In another sense it is unnatural: what should we say of a man who fails to see in broad daylight?
... أَن جَاءهُمْ مُنذِرٌ مِّنْهُمْ فَقَالَ الْكَافِرُونَ هَذَا شَيْءٌ عَجِيبٌ ﴿٢﴾
... that there has come to them a Warner from among themselves. So the Unbelievers say:
"This is a wonderful thing!
Asad’s Version:
KNOWN only by the letter-symbol q (qaf) preceding the first verse, this surah appears to have been revealed in the fourth year of the Prophet's mission. Commencing and ending with a reference to the Qur'an, it is devoted in its entirety to the twin problems of death and resurrection.
In The Name of God, The Most Gracious, The Dispenser of Grace:
50:1 Qaf CONSIDER this sublime Qur'an!
(50:2) But nay - they deem it strange that a warner should have come unto them from their own midst; 2 and so these deniers of the truth are saying, "A strange thing is this!
[[Asad’s notes - 2 This is the earliest Qur'anic mention - repeated again and again in other places of people's "deeming it strange" that a purportedly divine message should have been delivered by someone "from their own midst", i.e., a mortal like themselves. Although it is undoubtedly, in the first instance, a reference to the negative attitude of the Meccan pagans to Muhammad's call, its frequent repetition throughout the Qur'an has obviously an implication going far beyond that historical reference: it points to
the tendency common to many people, at all stages of human development, to distrust any religious statement that is devoid of all exoticism inasmuch as it is enunciated by a person sharing the social and cultural background of those whom he addresses, and because the message itself relies exclusively - as the Qur'an does - on an appeal to man's reason and moral sense. Hence, the Qur'an explicitly mentions people's "objections" to a prophet "who eats food [like ordinary mortals] and goes about in the
market-places" (25:7; see also note 16 on 25:20).
3 Lit., "what the earth diminishes of them" - implying that God's promise of resurrection takes the fact of the dead bodies' decomposition fully into account. Consequently, resurrection will be like "a new creation" (cf. 10:4, 21:104, 30:11, 85:13, etc.), recalling the recurrent process of creation and re-creation visible in all organic nature (cf. 10:34, 27:64, 30:27).
4 Since they reject a priori all thought of life after death, they are perplexed by the lack of any answer to the "why" and "what for" of maris life, by the evident inequality of human destinies, and by what appears to them as a senseless, blind cruelty of nature: problems which can be resolved only against the background of a belief in a continuation of life after bodily "death" and, hence, in the existence of a purpose and a plan underlying all creation. ]]