Ali Quli Qarai, The Qur’ān with a Phrase-by-Phrase English Translation (2005)

a punishment breaking the spine.
26 No indeed!
When the soul reaches up to the collar bones,
27 and it is said, ‘Who will take him up?’1
28 and he knows that it is the [time of] parting,
29 and each shank clasps the other shank,2
30 that day he shall be driven toward your Lord.
31 He neither confirmed [the truth], nor prayed,
32 bit denied [it] and turned away,
33 and went swaggering to his family.
34 So woe to you! Woe to you!
35 Again, woe to you! Woe to you!
36 Does man suppose
that he would be abandoned to futility?
37 Was he not a drop of emitted semen?
38 Then he became a clinging mass;
then He created [him] and proportioned [him],
39 and made of him the two sexes,
the male and the female.
40 Is not such a one able
to revive the dead?

76. Sūrat al-Insān 3

In the Name of Allah,
the All-beneficent, the All-merciful.

1 That is, by the angels of mercy and the angels of wrath present at the side of the dying person, as to which of them will take charge of him. Or those who are present by the side of the dying person say, ‘Where is the medicine man?’

2 An idiom suggesting a time of great hardship, or, metaphorically, death throes.

3 The sūrah takes its name from the word “man” (al-insān) mentioned in verse 1.

Cite this page

Ali Quli Qarai, The Qur’ān with a Phrase-by-Phrase English Translation, Islamic College for Advance Studies Press (ICAS), London (Distributed by The Centre for Translation of the Holy Qur’ān, Qom, Iran), Consulted online at “Quran Archive - Texts and Studies on the Quran” on 29 Mar. 2024: http://quran-archive.org/explorer/ali-quli-qarai/2005?page=857