1. The word al-Haaqqah as used in the text means an event which has inevitably to take place and the occurrence of which in the future is so certain as to admit of no doubt or suspicion. To use this word for Resurrection and to begin the discourse with it by itself shows that the people were denying its occurrence. They are being told: That which you are denying is inevitable: your denial will not prevent its occurrence.

2. These two questions, one after the other, have been put to arouse the listeners, to make them understand the importance of the theme and listen to what follows with full attention.

3. As the disbelievers of Makkah denied Resurrection and took the news of its coming lightly, they have been warned at the outset, as if to say: Resurrection is inevitable: whether you believe in it or not, it will in any case take place. Then, they are told: It is not a simple and ordinary thing that a person accepts the news of the coming of an event or not, but it has a deep relationship with the morals of the nations and with their future. The history of the nations, which lived before you, testifies that the nation which refused to believe in the Hereafter and thought this worldly life only to be the real life and denied that man would have ultimately to render an account of his deeds before God, corrupted itself morally until the punishment of God overtook it and eliminated it from the world.

4. The word al-qariah is derived from qar, which means to hammer, to beat, to knock and to strike one thing upon the other. This other word for Resurrection has been used to give an idea of its terror and dread.

5. In Surah (Al-Aaraf, Ayat 78), it has been called ar-rajfah (a terrible earthquake); in (Surah Houd, Ayat 67) as-sayhah (a violent blast); in (Surah HaMim As-Sajdah, Ayat 17), it has been said: They were overtaken by saiqa-tul-adhab (a humiliating scourge); and here the same punishment has been described as at-taghiyah (a violent catastrophe). These words describe different aspects of the same calamity.

6. The reference is to the towns and settlements of the people of the Prophet Lot (peace upon be him), about which it has been said in( Surah Houd, Ayat 82) and( Surah Al-Hijr, Ayat 74), We turned them upside down.

7. The illusion is to the deluge of the Prophet Noah (peace be upon him), in which a whole nation was drowned because of this very crime, and only those people were saved, who had listened to and obeyed the Messenger of Allah.

8. We boarded you: Because the whole human race that exists today has descended from the people who were boarded in the Ark thousands of years ago and thus saved from the deluge. It means: You exist in the world today because in that deluge Allah had caused only the infidels to be drowned and had saved the believers.

9. The conscious ears: the ears which may hear it consciously and take it in. Although the word ear has been used, it implies the hearers who may hear the event and always remember it, take heed from it, and may never forget what dreadful fate the deniers of the Hereafter and the disbelievers of the Messenger of God would ultimately suffer.