Verse. 5492

'Abdullāh Ibn 'Abbās / Muḥammad al-Fīrūzabādī

تفسير : (then how) will you ward off disbelief, idolatry and indecencies, o people of mecca (if ye disbelieve) in the life of the world, (will ye protect yourselves upon the day) the day of judgement (which will turn children grey) when they hear allah say to adam: “o adam! send a group from your progeny to the fire”. adam will say: “o lord! how many?” allah will say: “from every one thousand, send 999 to the fire and one person to the garden”,

Jalāl al-Dīn al-Maḥallī

تفسير : so, if you disbelieve, in this world, how will you guard against a day (yawman is the direct object of tattaqūna, ‘you guard against’) that is, against the chastisement thereof, by what defence will you defend yourselves against the chastisement of a day, that will make the children grey-haired (shīb is the plural of ashyab) by the severity of its terrors, this being the day of resurrection (the shīn of shīb should actually have a damma, but it is given a kasra because of its [phonetic] affinity with the yā’) — a distressing day is described as being ‘a day that makes the forelocks of children turn grey’, which is [usually] understood figuratively; but it may be that in the case of this verse it is meant literally —