(21–30) “No! When the earth is crushed, pounded again and again, * and your Lord comes, with the angels rank upon rank, * and Hell is brought forth that Day—on that Day man will remember, but what good will remembrance be to him?”

“No!” That is, not [all] the wealth you have loved and the pleasures for which you have competed will remain yours. Rather, before you lies a tremendous Day and a dreadful terror. On that Day, the earth, the mountains, and all that is upon them will be crushed until the earth is made a flat, level plain, containing neither depression nor elevation.

Allah Most High will come to pass judgment between His servants amid canopies of clouds. The noble angels, the inhabitants of all the heavens, will also come rank upon rank—that is, one rank after another. The angels of each heaven will come in a rank, surrounding the creatures beneath them. These will be ranks of humility and abasement before the All-Compelling Sovereign.

“And Hell is brought forth that Day,” led by the angels with chains.

When these events take place, “on that Day man will remember” the good and evil deeds he sent ahead.

“But what good will remembrance be to him?” Its proper time will have passed and its opportunity will be gone. Grieving over how he had fallen short in his duty to Allah, he will say, “If only I had sent ahead for my life!”—that is, a righteous deed for his eternal, everlasting life—as Allah Most High says: