"We will leave them aside, just as they left aside"
نَنسَىٰهُمْ كَمَا نَسُوا۟
nansāhum kamā nasū — We will leave them aside, just as they left aside
In 7:51 the same verb of forgetting/leaving-aside runs in both directions: the people left aside the meeting of the Day, and God responds by leaving them aside in exactly the same way, with the comparison marked by kamā.
The verse describes those who took their dīn as diversion and play and were deluded by the lowly life (7:51). The mirror falls in the sentence 'So today We will leave them aside, just as they left aside the meeting of this Day of theirs' (7:51). One verb root, n-s-y, is used twice in a single verse, and the action passes between the two parties: first the people performed the act — they 'left aside the meeting of this Day of theirs' — and then God performs the same act upon them — 'We will leave them aside.' The particle kamā makes their leaving-aside the standard for God's act: the treatment they receive is set as equal to the treatment they gave. The verse itself supplies the temporal frame: 'today' marks the Day on which the reciprocal act is carried out, the same Day whose meeting they had previously left aside. The structure is thus a self-announced equivalence — the verb names both what they did and what is now done to them, and the comparison is stated in the verse's own words rather than inferred. The final clause, 'and for how they used to stubbornly reject Our signs' (7:51), adds a further stated ground for the act, extending the cause beyond the leaving-aside of the meeting to their habitual rejection of the signs. The mirror is completed within one verse: act, reciprocal act, standard of comparison, and stated cause all appear in a single sentence.
Where it occurs
- 7:51 Both occurrences of the verb appear in this one verse: the people's leaving-aside of the meeting of the Day, and God's leaving-aside of them, linked by kamā.
All Qur'anic expressions