17فَلا تَعلَمُ نَفسٌ ما أُخفِيَ لَهُم مِن قُرَّةِ أَعيُنٍ جَزاءً بِما كانوا يَعمَلونَMuhammad AsadAnd [as for all such believers,] no human being can imagine what blissful delights, as yet hidden, await them [in the life to come]1 as a reward for all that they did.Lit., "what is kept hidden for them [by way] of a joy of the eyes", i.e., of blissful delights, irrespective of whether seen, heard or felt. The expression "what is kept hidden for them" clearly alludes to the unknowable - and, therefore, only allegorically describable - quality of life in the hereafter. The impossibility of man's really "imagining" paradise has been summed up by the Prophet in the well-authenticated hadith; "God says: 'I have readied for My righteous servants what no eye has ever seen, and no ear has ever heard, and no heart of man has ever conceived"' (Bukhari and Muslim, on the authority of Abu Hurayrah; also Tirmidhi). This hadith has always been regarded by the Companions as the Prophet's own comment on the above verse'(cf. Fath al-Bari VIII, 418 f.).