Texts of Islam

The Meaning of the Glorious Qur'ân,: 39. az-Zumar: The Companies

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This is Surah 39 (Az-Zumar, "The Companies") from the Quran, presented in M.M. Pickthall's early 20th-century English translation — a rendering notable for its archaic Biblical diction ("Lo!", "hath", "thee") intended to convey scriptural solemnity. The surah's central argument is the absolute, unshared sovereignty of Allah: all creation, intercession, guidance, and judgment belong exclusively to Him, making any form of polytheism or intermediary worship not merely wrong but logically incoherent. A recurring structural move is the paired contrast — the believer versus the disbeliever, the one who worships in the night watches versus the heedless, those who follow the truth versus those who deny it — building a case that the two are categorically unequal and will face categorically different fates at the Resurrection. The surah is unusually direct in addressing human psychological tendencies: it names the pattern of crying out to God in distress and then forgetting Him in prosperity, and it explicitly offers hope to those who have been "prodigal to their own hurt," urging repentance before doom arrives. It closes with an eschatological tableau — the trumpet blast, the earth lit by divine light, souls driven to hell or paradise in companies — that gives the chapter its name and provides the theological stakes for everything argued before it.

The Meaning of the Glorious Qur'ân,: 39. az-Zumar: The Companies

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