Revelations Well Expounded (Fussilat)
Verses 49-50 GROUP_1268 41.49-50
49
لَا يَسْأَمُ الْإِنسَانُ مِن دُعَاء الْخَيْرِ وَإِن مَّسَّهُ الشَّرُّ فَيَؤُوسٌ قَنُوطٌ
Man never tires of asking for the good things of life; but if evil fortune befalls him, he abandons all hope, giving himself up to despair.
50
وَلَئِنْ أَذَقْنَاهُ رَحْمَةً مِّنَّا مِن بَعْدِ ضَرَّاء مَسَّتْهُ لَيَقُولَنَّ هَذَا لِي وَمَا أَظُنُّ السَّاعَةَ قَائِمَةً وَلَئِن رُّجِعْتُ إِلَى رَبِّي إِنَّ لِي عِندَهُ لَلْحُسْنَى فَلَنُنَبِّئَنَّ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا بِمَا عَمِلُوا وَلَنُذِيقَنَّهُم مِّنْ عَذَابٍ غَلِيظٍ
When We give him a taste of some of Our mercy, after some adversity has touched him, he is sure to say, ‘This is my due. I do not think that the Hour is going to come. And even if I return to my Lord, He will surely reward me well.’ But truly We shall tell those who deny the truth [all] that they did, and shall make them suffer a hard punishment.
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Commentary
(a) The moment of crisis for a man is the moment of self-discovery. So, when he is confronted with adversity, he forgets self-conceit and starts remembering God. At that time, he realises that he is the subject or servant of God and God is his Deity. But, when God gives him relief from his trouble and blesses him with amenities, he immediately forgets his earlier position. He links the grace of God bestowed upon him with the cause-and-effect chain and considers it to be result of his own devices and abilities. He develops a perverse mentality according to which he thinks that the only life is that of this world, and that there will be no reckoning in the Court of God. Furthermore, his prosperity leads him into the misunderstanding that since he is well-off here, he will definitely be well-off in the hereafter also.