بَلىٰ إِنَّ رَبَّهُ كانَ بِهِ بَصيرًا
Yes indeed, his Lord sees him best.
EXPOSITION
The expression balā (yes indeed) is an emphatic statement that implies negation, and is a rebuke of their false belief that resurrection would not occur.
The Arabic kāna (untranslated) conveys the meaning of continuity here, meaning ‘his Lord has always been watching him’, from the moment of his creation until the end of his days.
This verse and the previous are a powerful reminder of the immense effect that belief in an afterlife has on morality. The believer will never think that there is a time that no one can see him and that he can do evil without any repercussions.
Those who reject the afterlife and an omniscient God have no such constraints on their moral deliberation, and as a result often reduce it to simply ‘that which is legal’, akin to what is sometimes described as moral positivism.
Often, those who deny the Day of Judgement will point to the existence of hypocrisy amongst nominally religious people or to the various crimes and horrors carried out in the name of religion throughout history as examples to showcase that religious individuals have no claim to moral superiority.
There is no denying that such things have occurred and do still occur. However, the core issue is clear: does a person’s belief that God is aware of his actions and that he will one day be held responsible for them have a positive effect on his moral deliberation? Can it stop him from doing things which he might have otherwise indulged in and pursued, even to the detriment of others or himself? As the answer to these is obvious, there can be no doubt about the positive effect of belief in a hereafter and Day of Judgement, and the harm in the lack thereof.
[1] Tibyan, 10/311; Tabari, 30/76.
[2] See Baghawi, 5/229; Razi, 31/100.
[3] See Nemuneh, 26/310.