Surah an-Naba' (The News ) 78 : 19

Overview (Verses 17 - 20)

Reckoning and Reward
 
All this has been for work and pleasure, but there are reckoning and reward to follow, on the appointed day: “Fixed is the Day of Decision. On that day the Trumpet is blown and you shall come in crowds, and heaven is opened and becomes gates, and the mountains are made to move away, and seem to have been a mirage.” (Verses 17-20) Creation is not without purpose. The Creator, who has accurately measured human life and carefully provided perfect harmony between it and the universe, will not let people just live and die in vain. Reason cannot accept that those who do good and the evildoers should both end in dust. The rightly-guided and the straying folk, the just and the tyrants cannot all share the same fate. There must be a day when everything is judged and evaluated. The day is appointed by God: “Fixed is the Day of Decision.” (Verse 17)
 
It is a day when upheaval overtakes the universe and destroys its systems. “On that day the Trumpet is blown and you shall come in crowds, and heaven is opened and becomes gates, and the mountains are made to move away, and seem to have been a mirage.” (Verses 18-20) The ‘Trumpet’ is a kind of horn of which we know nothing except its name and that it will be blown. We need not waste our time trying to discover how, for such discovery will not strengthen our faith.
 
God has revealed to us what we need to know of the secrets of the universe so that we may not waste our energy in the futile pursuit of useless knowledge. We can imagine, however, a blast on a Trumpet which people answer by arriving in droves. We can visualize the scene whereby all the generations of mankind rise up, walking in their multitudes, from all directions, to attend the great reckoning. We can imagine the fearful sight of people rising from their graves and the great, huge, endless crowd they form. We can feel the horror of the day, people’s helplessness and fear. We do not know where all this will happen, nor when, for the universe is full of great events: “And heaven is opened and becomes gates, and the mountains are made to move away, and seem to have been a mirage.” (Verses 19-20)
 
Heaven, the mighty heaven, is opened up so that it becomes gates. It is, as described elsewhere in the Qur’an, rent asunder. So, it will look very unfamiliar to us. The firmly dug-in pegs, i.e. the mountains, are made to move away. They are hammered, scattered, turned into dust, blown by the wind, as other Qur’anic verses describe. Hence, they become non-existent, like a mirage which has no reality. Or, probably, different rays are reflected against them after they have been turned into dust and they look like a mirage.
 
All in all, horror is apparent in the upheaval which envelops the universe as well as in men’s resurrection after the Trumpet is blown. Such is the Day of Decision carefully and wisely fixed.