يَومَ يَبعَثُهُمُ اللَّهُ جَميعًا فَيُنَبِّئُهُم بِما عَمِلوا ۚ أَحصاهُ اللَّهُ وَنَسوهُ ۚ وَاللَّهُ عَلىٰ كُلِّ شَيءٍ شَهيدٌ
The day when Allah will raise them all together, He will inform them about what they have done. Allah has kept account of it, while they forgot it, and Allah is witness to all things.
EXEGESIS
The perfect tense verb aḥṣāʾ means to record, to keep record of as in 36:12, to calculate as in 14:34, and to keep count of, to bear as in 73:20. The verb in this verse, which occurs in reference to God, means: God has kept account. Its verbal noun is iḥṣāʾ which means the comprehensive and complete knowledge and encompassing cognisance of the number of things without anything of it being lost, and attaining, obtaining, or achieving the number. The noun iḥṣāʾ is derived from ḥaṣā meaning pebbles or small stones, and its usage in the meaning of counting is from the perspective that the Arabs used to rely on pebbles and small stones in the matter of counting just as others may rely on fingers to count.
EXPOSITION
The day when Allah will raise them all together explicates the point in time when the painful (verse 4) and humiliating (verse 5) punishment promised to those who opposed God’s limits (verse 4) and those who opposed God and His Messenger (verse 5) will be meted out. That is the Day of Reckoning, reward, and requital when God will resurrect and gather together all people (18:47). The verse continues, He will inform them about what they have done, this being a reference to informing the opponents of the reality of what they had done in the world of sins and abominations, a theme found repeated in 6:60 and 9:94. This will happen in order to censure and rebuke them, to embarrass them publicly, and to determine their punishment, for recompense on that day shall be according to deeds done.
Allah has kept account of it, while they forgot it: God has held against them what they had done, and has established it in the record of their deeds while they had forgotten it, in part or in whole, which however does not affect the matter at all for God has encompassed it in knowledge, and none would be treated unfairly (17:13-14, 43:80, 50:17-18, 82:10-12). Most opponents of God and His Prophet as well as most sinners tend to conveniently forget what they had perpetrated of evil during their lifetimes and falsely come to believe that they are without blemish. The previous statement is further explained and emphasised by and Allah is witness to all things, a statement with which many verses terminate, such as 4:33, 5:117, 22:17, 33:55, 34:47, 41:53, 85:9, and 3:98. It means God knows everything from all different aspects and perspectives and He is present in every place and time. Nothing is hidden from Him even if many things are such that they cannot be seen or perceived. Therefore, such a being who is a witness over all things obviously has comprehensive and complete knowledge and encompassing cognisance of everything including the deeds of mankind, which thus points to God’s omnipresence and omniscience. The reaction of these opponents is described in 18:49: The book will be set up. Then you will see the guilty apprehensive of what is in it. They will say: ‘Woe to us! What a book is this! It omits nothing, big or small, without enumerating it.’ They will find present whatever they had done, and your Lord does not wrong anyone.
[1] Arabic-English Dictionary of Quranic Usage, p. 216.
[2] Mizan, 19/180.
[3] Mizan, 19/180.
[4] Mizan, 19/180.
[5] Tibyan, 9/546; Tabrisi.J, 4/257; Mizan, 19/180.
[6] Kashif, 7/267.
[7] Tibyan, 9/546; Tabrisi, 9/376.
[8] Safi, 5/145.
[9] Tibyan, 9/546; Tabrisi, 9/376.
[10] Mizan, 19/180.
[11] Tibyan, 9/547; Tabrisi, 9/376.
[12] Munyah, 28/56.
[13] Tibyan, 9/547; Tabrisi, 9/376.
[14] Munyah, 28/56.