The Cave
IN THE NAME OF GOD, THE MOST GRACIOUS, THE DISPENSER OF GRACE[18:19]
And so, [in the course of time,] We awakened them; and they began to ask one another [as to what had happened to them].
One of them asked: "How long have you remained thus?"
[The others] answered: "We have remained thus a day, or part of a day."
Said they [who were endowed with deeper insight]: "Your Sustainer knows best how long you have thus remained. Let, then, one of you go with these silver coins to the town, and let him find out what food is purest there, and bring you thereof [some] provisions. But let him behave with great care and by no means make anyone aware of you:
* v.19 : See note 10 above.
* It seems to me that the prefix li in li-yatasā’alū (which most commentators take to mean “so that they might ask one another”) is not a particle denoting a purpose (“so that”) but, rather, a lām al-‘āqibah – that is, a particle indicating no more than a causal sequence – which in this context may be brought out by the phrase “and they began...,” etc.
* Cf. 2:259, where exactly the same question is asked and exactly the same wondering answer is given in the parable of the man whom God caused to be dead for a hundred years and thereupon brought back to life. The striking verbal identity of question and answer in the two passages is obviously not accidental: it points, in a deliberately revealing manner, to the identity of the idea underlying these two allegories: namely, God’s power to “bring forth the living out of that which is dead, and the dead out of that which is alive” (3:27, 6:95, 10:31, 30:19), i.e., to create life, to cause it to disappear and then to resurrect it. Beyond this, the above verse alludes to the deceptive, purely earthbound character of the human concept of “time.”
* I.e., they understood-in contrast to their companions, who were merely concerned about what had “actually” happened to them – that the lapse of time between their “falling asleep” and their “awakening” had no reality of its own and no meaning, just as it has no reality or meaning in connection with a human being’s death and subsequent resurrection (cf. 17:52 and the corresponding note 59): and this explains the reference to the “two viewpoints” (lit., “two parties”) in verse 12 above.