Say: “None in the heavens or earth knows what is hidden except God. Nor can they ever perceive when they shall be raised from the dead.”
Indeed the total sum of their knowledge stops short of comprehending the hereafter. Nay, they are in doubt of it. Nay, they are blind to it.(The Ants; Al-Naml: 27: 65-66)
Having taken us on this round of universal scenes and facts of our lives to establish the truth of God’s oneness and the falsehood of polytheism, the surah begins a new round citing aspects of what lies beyond the reach of human perception, which is known only to God. This round includes the life to come, which human nature and logic accept as essential, but our knowledge cannot determine its timing.
“Say: None in the heavens or earth knows what is hidden except God. Nor can they ever perceive when they shall be raised from the dead.” (Verse 65) Belief in resurrection, reckoning and reward is an integral and indispensable element of faith. There must be a future world when reward is completed so as to make it fit the action done. It is necessary that man’s heart and mind are focused on such future life, so as to make man’s action in this world look to what awaits him there.
Over countless generations and with successive divine messages humanity took a singularly bizarre attitude toward the question of resurrection and the life to come, despite it being both simple and necessary. It always stood incredulous when a messenger of God said that there will be life after death. The great miracle of initiating life in the first place was not enough to make humanity realize that a second life is easier to accomplish. Hence people often turned away from every signal warning them of what awaits them in the life to come. They have been bent on following their erring ways, disbelieving in God’s messages and rejecting His messengers.
The life to come is part of the realm that lies beyond our faculties of perception and which is known only to God. Yet unbelievers always demanded to know the exact timing of this future life, or else they would continue to deny it. They treated it as superstitions and legends that has no place in reality. Therefore the surah makes clear that it is God alone who knows the world beyond, and that human knowledge of the hereafter is very limited indeed. “Say: ‘None in the heavens or earth knows what is hidden except God. Nor can they ever perceive when they shall be raised from the dead.’ Indeed the total sum of their knowledge stops short of comprehending the hereafter. Nay, they are in doubt of it. Nay, they are blind to it.” (Verses 65-66)
Ever since the beginning of human life, man has been unable to see anything of the world beyond his perceptive faculties except what God, who knows all, has chosen to reveal to him. This has always worked for man’s benefit. Had God known that revealing such knowledge would be good for man, He would have satisfied his intense curiosity and revealed it to him.
God has given man a host of abilities, talents, powers and potentials that enable him to fulfill the task assigned to him on earth, but not more. To lift the thick curtains that hide what lies beyond the reach of human perception would not help man in his task. Indeed keeping it unknown increases man’s search for knowledge, which then opens for him new vistas giving him hidden treasures in land, sea and space. Man’s quest for knowledge enables him to discover more of the world’s secrets and powers which he can then use to improve the quality of life on earth. He can use its materials and products, modify his practices and elevate his life, and by so doing fulfill his role of building human life on earth.
It is not only man who has been denied access to God’s knowledge that He has chosen to keep to Himself. All creatures that live anywhere in the universe, including the angels and the jinn, are assigned missions and tasks that do not require knowledge of what God has kept secret. Therefore: “Say: ‘None in the heavens or earth knows what is hidden except God.” (Verse 65) This is a definitive statement which leaves no room for anyone to make any false claim. Yet this statement speaks about ‘what is hidden’ in general. Therefore, it is followed by a more specific statement concerning the life to come because, next to God’s oneness, it represents the second most important issue of contention with the idolaters: “Nor can they ever perceive when they shall be raised from the dead.” (Verse 65)
This is a negation of any knowledge of the timing of resurrection, even in the most undefined form of knowledge, which is perception. It is not only that they lack any definite knowledge of when the resurrection will take place; they cannot perceive it as it approaches. Such knowledge is part of what is hidden, which none in the heavens or earth knows anything about.
This point is then left aside, so as to speak about their attitude to the hereafter and knowledge of it: “Indeed the total sum of their knowledge stops short of comprehending the hereafter.” On this issue they have reached all that they can aspire to achieve, but remained unable to fathom it. “Nay, they are in doubt of it.” They are uncertain whether it will ever come. How can they know its timing and expect its arrival? “Nay, they are blind to it.” In as far as the hereafter is concerned, they are totally blind, unable to see or comprehend anything. This last statement depicts them in a worse situation with regard to the hereafter than the two earlier ones.