Surah Al-Kahf 18:25
سُورَةُ الكَهۡفِ · Meccan · Verse 25 of 110
وَلَبِثُوا۟ فِى كَهْفِهِمْ ثَلَٰثَ مِا۟ئَةٍۢ سِنِينَ وَٱزْدَادُوا۟ تِسْعًۭا
Translation
[Some say], ‘The sleepers stayed in their cave for three hundred years,’ some added nine more.
English translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem.
Meaning and reflection
'And they remained in their cave three hundred years, and add nine.' Ibn Ashur and al-Saadi note the vast span, over three centuries, during which whole worlds changed while the sleepers were held in a single unbroken moment, waking as if it were a day. Ask yourself: three hundred years compressed, for them, into what felt like an afternoon's nap. It plays with my sense of time in a way meant to loosen my grip on it: the durations I find endless, a hard year, a long wait, are nothing against God's spans, and even a life feels, at its end, like 'a day or part of a day'. If centuries can pass like a single sleep in God's keeping, how much smaller are my own timelines than they feel, and how much of my panic about 'not enough time' is a misjudgement of scale?
Grounded in classical tafsir: Ibn Ashur, al-Saadi, al-Biqa'i.
Topics that discuss this verse
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