—nor did He say, “in doubt of it.” This particular preposition is used with the verbal noun even though it is not used with the verb itself—for one would never say ghafaltu minhu (“I was heedless from it”) or shakaktu minhu (“I doubted from it”). It is as though the heedlessness and the doubt actually issue forth from the very thing that ought to dispel them; it becomes the starting-point of his heedlessness and doubt. That is far more forceful than saying, “in heedlessness of it” or “in doubt of it,” for the verse turns what should have been the source of recollection and certitude into the source of heedlessness and doubt.

He then states that the veil of heedlessness and distraction will be removed on that Day, just as the cover of sleep is lifted from the heart so that it wakes, and from the eyes so that they open. The relation between the lifting of this veil at the moment of direct sight and the lifting of sleep at the moment of waking is one and the same.

Next, the Exalted informs us that a man’s qarīn—the angel who was paired with him in the world to record his deeds and words—will say when he brings him forth: “This is the one whom You entrusted to me in the world; I have now presented him before You.” This is the interpretation of Mujāhid.¹

Ibn Qutaybah² said: the meaning is, “This is what I have written down and fully tallied of his speech and his deeds; it is here with me.”

The sound understanding is that the verse encompasses both points: “Here is the person I was charged with, and here are the deeds I have enumerated against him.”

At that moment it will be said, “Cast both of you into Hell” (50:24). This may be an address to the driver and the witness; or it may be an address to the single angel assigned to punish him—an idiom well established in Arab speech; or else the final alif may be the morphing of the light emphatic nūn, with the form used in connected speech treated as though it were pause.

¹ Mujāhid.
² Ibn Qutaybah.