105 Preface وَيَسأَلونَكَ عَنِ الجِبالِ فَقُل يَنسِفُها رَبّي نَسفًاYusuf AliThey ask thee concerning1 the Mountains: say, “My Lord will uproot them and scatter them as dust;2In the last verse, it was the deceptiveness and relativity of Time that was dealt with. Here we come to the question of space, solidity, bulk. The question was actually put to the Holy Prophet: what will become of the solid Mountains, or in the English phrase, “the eternal hills'? They are no more substantial than anything else in this temporal world. When the “new world”, (13:5) of which Unbelievers doubted, is actually in being, the mountains will cease to exist. We can imagine the scene of judgment as a level plain, in which there are no ups and downs and no places of concealment. All is straight and level, without corners, mysteries, or lurking doubts.The one word nasafa carries the ideas of (1) tearing up by the roots, (2) scattering like chaff or dust, and (3) winnowing. Its twofold repetition here intensifies the meaning.