“Indeed, We have tested them as We tested the owners of the garden, when they swore to harvest its fruit in the morning,” [al-Qalam: 17] “and made no exception.” [al-Qalam: 18] “Then a calamity from your Lord swept over it while they slept,” [al-Qalam: 19] and by morning it was like the blackness of night.

Allah, Blessed and Exalted, says: We tried and tested the polytheists of Quraysh just as We tested the owners of the garden. According to some Quran commentators, these owners were people who possessed a garden—that is, an orchard. It is said to have been in a region of Yemen called Dawrān. An Israelite man there owned this garden and gave the poor what was due to Allah from its produce. It is related in Quran commentary that he would keep a year’s provisions and give the remainder in charity. It is also related that he would leave whatever the sickle missed, whatever remained beneath the heaps, whatever grapes were missed during picking, and whatever fell beyond the mat spread beneath a palm tree when its dates were harvested. A considerable amount would accumulate from this.

When he died, his sons inherited it. They said, “By Allah, our father was indeed a fool to feed the poor! There are many of us; if we treat the poor as our father did, we will be ruined.” They therefore swore to harvest it in the dimness of the night. Allah, Mighty and Majestic, says: “And made no exception.” [al-Qalam: 18] That is, they did not say, “If Allah wills.”

When the appointed time arrived, at the first dim light of dawn, they set out early for their garden to harvest it:

“They set out early, determined and confident in their ability.” [al-Qalam: 25]

That is, they were earnest in pursuing their undertaking. Another explanation is that they were intent on their destination: they believed themselves able to reach their garden, with no calamity standing between them and it. Another explanation is that they were confident in their ability to withhold, as in the expression hāradat al-sanah, used when a year withholds its bounty, and hāradat al-nāqah, used when a she-camel’s milk dries up. Another explanation is that they set out in anger.

When they saw it—that is, their garden—they did not recognize it because it had become so black. They said to one another, “We have surely lost our way,” meaning the way to the garden: “This is not our garden.” When they realized what had happened, they said, “Rather, we have been deprived”—that is, deprived of the sustenance they had hoped to obtain from it and the means to provide generously for their families and orphans.

“The most moderate among them said”—that is, the most just among them—“Did I not tell you, ‘Why do you not glorify Allah?’” That is, why did you not qualify your oath by saying, “If Allah wills”? Some explained it as meaning, “Why do you not pray?” He then said: “They thought that they had been afflicted because they had neglected prayer.”

“They said, ‘Glory be to our Lord! We have indeed been wrongdoers.’” [al-Qalam: 29]