The Questioner and the Ascending Stairways (70:1-4)
“A questioner asked about an impending punishment — for the disbelievers, of which there is no preventer — from Allah, Owner of the Ascending Stairways. The angels and the Spirit ascend to Him in a day, the extent of which is fifty thousand years.”
The ma’arij (ascending stairways/levels) are a cosmological assertion about divine time: what humans experience as “long” in divine perspective takes no time at all. The questioner’s urgency (“when is the punishment?”) is answered not with a date but with a different framework entirely — the questioner is asking about divine time while living in human time.
Al-Halu’ — The Anxiety of the Human Condition (70:19-22)
“Indeed, the human being was created anxious (halu’an). When adversity touches him, he is despairing. And when good touches him, withholding — except the observers of prayer.”
This is a Quranic diagnosis of the human condition without faith: existentially anxious, oscillating between despair and hoarding. The exception is not theological correctness but a practice: al-musallun — those who pray. Prayer reorients the self from its anxiety toward the One who holds all time.
The Portrait of the Saved (70:22-35)
The surah offers a detailed ethical portrait of those whose anxiety is healed through practice:
- Those who are constant in their prayers
- Those in whose wealth is a known right for the petitioner and the deprived
- Those who affirm the Day of Recompense
- Those who guard their private parts (chastity)
- Those who maintain their trusts and covenants
- Those who stand as witnesses truthfully
The list moves from prayer to wealth to chastity to trustworthiness — the full circle of the person who has resolved their halu’ through surrender.
See also: Understanding Namaz, Fiqh Al Sadaqa, Tazkiyah, Tawhid Divine Unity, Quran Sciences, Tafsir Overview