You forgot; We have forgotten you
نَسِيتُمْ
nasītum — you forgot
In (32:14) the single root ن س ي is used twice within one verse: the addressees' forgetting of the meeting of their Day is answered by the speaker's declaration of forgetting them, so that the same action is turned back on its original actors.
The verse opens with an imperative, 'So taste', whose stated cause is 'you forgot the meeting of this Day of yours' (32:14). The verb نَسِيتُمْ is a perfect, second person masculine plural, from the root ن س ي. The second occurrence, نَسِينَٰكُمْ, is likewise a perfect from the same root, but first person plural with a second person masculine plural object pronoun, introduced by إِنَّا. The two forms are grammatically mirrored: the second person plural who forgot becomes the object of the first person plural's forgetting. The verse's own words present this as a response: the tasting is 'for the reason that' (بِمَا) they forgot, and the declaration 'indeed, We have forgotten you' follows immediately, joined by no conjunction, so the two forgettings stand side by side as matched acts. The verse does not specify what 'We have forgotten you' entails beyond the surrounding clauses; the second imperative, 'And taste the torment of abiding permanence for what you used to do' (32:14), gives the consequence in the verse's own terms. The mirror structure is visible purely in the morphology: same root, same verb form, same tense, with the roles of subject and object exchanged between the two parties.
Where it occurs
- 32:14 The verse uses ن س ي twice, first of the addressees forgetting the meeting of their Day, then of the first person plural forgetting them in return.
All Qur'anic expressions