Surah Ar-Rum Ayat 9 (30:9 Quran) With Tafsir

Ala-Maududi

(30:9) Have they not travelled through the earth that they may observe what was the end of their predecessors^[8] who were far mightier and tilled the land^[9] and built upon it more than these have ever built?^[10] And Allah’s Messengers came to them with Clear Signs.^[11] It was not Allah Who wronged them, but it is they who wronged themselves.^[12]

8. This is a historical argument for the Hereafter. It means this: The Hereafter has not been denied only by a couple of the people in the world, but a large number of them have been involved in this disbelief in human history. Even there have been entire nations which either denied it altogether or lived heedless of it, or invented such false beliefs about life after death as rendered the concept of the Hereafter meaningless. Then the continuous experience of history reveals that in whatever form the Hereafter has been denied, its inevitable result has been that the people became corrupted morally, they lived irresponsible lives, they transgressed all limits of tyranny and wickedness, which became the cause of the destruction of one nation after the other. Does not this experience of thousands of years of history, which has been traced by human generations successively, prove that the Hereafter is a reality whose denial is fatal to man? Man has come to believe in gravitation only because he has always experienced and seen material things falling to the ground. He has recognized poison to be poison only because whoever took poison died. Similarly, when the denial of the Hereafter has always led to the corruption of morals for man, is not this experience enough to teach the lesson that the Hereafter is a reality, and to live one’s life heedless of it is dangerous?

9. The words athar-ul-ard in the original may either mean to plough the land for cultivation, or to dig the earth for taking out canals, underground water channels, minerals, etc.

10. This contains an answer to the argument of those who regard mere material progress as the sign of a nation’s being righteous. They argue like this: How is it possible that Allah will make fuel of Hell those people who have exploited the resources of the earth on such a large scale, who have constructed wonderful works on the earth and given birth to a grand civilizations? The Quran refutes this argument. Thus, such works of construction have also been built before by many nations on a large scale. Then, have you not seen that those nations have perished along with their civilization and their grand and magnificent works. There is no reason why the Law of God that has so treated in the world the mere material progress of a people lacking the right belief and conduct, will not treat them likewise in the next world and make them fuel of Hell.

11. That is, they came with such signs as were sufficient for anyone to be convinced of their being the true prophets. The mention of the coming of the prophets in this context implies this: On the one hand, there are evidences in man’s own self, and in the universe around him, and in the continuous experience of human history, and, on the other, there also came such prophets, one after the other, who showed clear signs of their being true prophets and warned (the people) that the Hereafter is sure to come.

12. That is, the destruction that overtook those nations afterwards, was not due to Allah’s being unjust to them but due to the injustice they had done to themselves. The person (or persons) who neither thinks rightly, nor adopts the right attitude by listening to others, will be responsible for his evil end if he meets destruction. God cannot be blamed for this, for God has not only made arrangements for conveying to man the knowledge of the reality through His Books and His Prophets, but also blessed man with the intellectual resources and powers by exploiting which he can always judge the authenticity of the knowledge brought by the Prophets and the Divine Books. Had God deprived man of this guidance and these resources and he had to meet with the consequences of following a wrong way then doubtlessly could God have been blamed for injustice.

Ibn-Kathir

9. Do they not travel in the land) means, `do they not understand and think and see and hear about the people of the past’ Allah says:

(9. cont – and see what was the end of those before them They were superior to them in strength, ) meaning, `the nations of the past who came before you were stronger than you to whom Muhammad has been sent; they had more wealth and more sons. You have not been given one-tenth of what they were given. They stayed longer in this world than you will stay. They were more civilized than you and were more prosperous in the land than you.’ Yet despite all that, when their Messengers came to them with clear signs, while they were enjoying their life of luxury, Allah punished them for their sins and they had no one who could protect them from Allah. Their wealth and sons could not protect them from the wrath of Allah in the slightest, and Allah was not at all unjust towards them when He sent His punishment upon them.

(9. cont – but they used to wrong themselves.) They brought destruction upon themselves, when they rejected and mocked the signs of Allah. All of this only happened because of their previous sins and their rejection (of the Messengers). Allah says: