Yunus 10:24
The verse builds a three-stage simile: (1) rain falls, plants flourish — abundance; (2) the earth puts on its "zukhruf" (its ornament), and its people fancy themselves "qādirūn ʿalayhā" (in command of it) — the illusion of control; (3) the command arrives, "ka-an lam taghna bi-l-amsi" (as if it had not been only yesterday) and the field is reaped.
إِنَّمَا مَثَلُ ٱلْحَيَوٰةِ ٱلدُّنْيَا كَمَآءٍ أَنزَلْنَـٰهُ مِنَ ٱلسَّمَآءِ فَٱخْتَلَطَ بِهِۦ نَبَاتُ ٱلْأَرْضِ مِمَّا يَأْكُلُ ٱلنَّاسُ وَٱلْأَنْعَـٰمُ حَتَّىٰٓ إِذَآ أَخَذَتِ ٱلْأَرْضُ زُخْرُفَهَا وَٱزَّيَّنَتْ وَظَنَّ أَهْلُهَآ أَنَّهُمْ قَـٰدِرُونَ عَلَيْهَآ أَتَىٰهَآ أَمْرُنَا لَيْلًا أَوْ نَهَارًا فَجَعَلْنَـٰهَا حَصِيدًا كَأَن لَّمْ تَغْنَ بِٱلْأَمْسِ ۚ كَذَٰلِكَ نُفَصِّلُ ٱلْـَٔايَـٰتِ لِقَوْمٍ يَتَفَكَّرُونَ
The likeness of the present life is this: water that We send down from the sky is absorbed by the plants of the earth, from which the people and the animals eat. Until, when the earth puts on its fine appearance, and is beautified, and its inhabitants think that they have mastered it, Our command descends upon it by night or by day, and We turn it into stubble, as if it had not flourished the day before. We thus clarify the revelations for people who reflect
Yunus 10:24 · Translation: talal-itani
Image
A whole life packed into three moments: emergence, the illusion of prosperity, an abrupt end. "Qawmin yatafakkarūn" — to see this cycle takes reflection.
Observation
The plant growth cycle is a well-known fact in ecology: rain → germination → growth → harvest or drying → back to the beginning. The whole vegetative cover completes this loop within an agricultural year; the verse's "as if it had not been only yesterday" is an annual biological fact. In human psychology the "illusion of control" (Langer, 1975) — the unreality of the **apparent control** we suppose we hold over systems we treat as steady — describes the verse's "qādirūn ʿalayhā" in the language of everyday observation.
Exegesis
Al-Rāzī (Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb) shows that the world-as-plant simile recurs in the Qurʾān (3:14, 18:45, 39:21); each recurrence stresses a different angle. Here the stress is on **the swift passage from prosperity to abrupt end**.
Sources
Tafsīr: al-Rāzī · Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb. Science: plant ecology, the illusion of control (social psychology).