LessonsThe Subject of Predication: Pronouns of Affair, Iltifāt and Departure from Expected ExpressionQuiz

The past tense normally marks an earlier event. Rhetorically, it may depict a future occurrence whose realization is presented as so certain that it is as though already accomplished.

«وَيَوْمَ يُنْفَخُ فِي الصُّورِ فَفَزِعَ مَنْ فِي السَّمَاوَاتِ وَمَنْ فِي الْأَرْضِ»
On the day the trumpet is blown, those in the heavens and the earth will be seized with terror. (Qurʾān 27:87)

«يُنفَخ» evokes the future blowing, while «فزع» has a past-tense form although the terror belongs to that future event. The contrast makes its realization vivid and certain.

This is not an alteration of morphological rules. Context supplies a future reference for a past-tense form, and rhetoric explains the communicative effect.

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A future event expressed with past-tense form

The Subject of Predication: Pronouns of Affair, Iltifāt and Departure from Expected Expression

The past tense normally marks an earlier event. Rhetorically, it may depict a future occurrence whose realization is presented as so certain that it is as though already accomplished.

«وَيَوْمَ يُنْفَخُ فِي الصُّورِ فَفَزِعَ مَنْ فِي السَّمَاوَاتِ وَمَنْ فِي الْأَرْضِ»
On the day the trumpet is blown, those in the heavens and the earth will be seized with terror. (Qurʾān 27:87)

«يُنفَخ» evokes the future blowing, while «فزع» has a past-tense form although the terror belongs to that future event. The contrast makes its realization vivid and certain.

This is not an alteration of morphological rules. Context supplies a future reference for a past-tense form, and rhetoric explains the communicative effect.