Surah Al-Baqarah 2:28
سُورَةُ البَقَرَةِ · Medinan · Verse 28 of 286
كَيْفَ تَكْفُرُونَ بِٱللَّهِ وَكُنتُمْ أَمْوَٰتًۭا فَأَحْيَٰكُمْ ۖ ثُمَّ يُمِيتُكُمْ ثُمَّ يُحْيِيكُمْ ثُمَّ إِلَيْهِ تُرْجَعُونَ
Translation
How can you ignore God when you were lifeless and He gave you life, when He will cause you to die, then resurrect you to be returned to Him?
English translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem.
Meaning and reflection
'How can you disbelieve in God, when you were dead and He gave you life, then He will cause you to die, then give you life again, and then to Him you will be returned?' Ibn Ashur and al-Saadi note the argument from my own existence, I was nothing ('dead'), then alive, and the God who managed that first, impossible-seeming creation will surely manage the second. Ask yourself: the proof of resurrection is me, I already crossed from non-existence into life once, though I remember nothing of how. The One who did that finds re-doing it trivial. And the verse maps my whole trajectory in one breath: nothing, life, death, life, return. It refuses to let me treat my existence as a self-explanatory given. If I truly reckoned with the fact that I was dead and was given life, would the second life be so hard to believe, and would I live this one so heedless of the 'return' that ends it?
Grounded in classical tafsir: Ibn Ashur, al-Saadi, Ibn Kathir.
Topics that discuss this verse
Surah Al-Baqarah 2:28 is discussed in 10 study guides on Maani. Each guide gathers the key verses, Arabic words and lessons of one Quranic topic.
Reflect on this verse
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