Am I Not Your Lord?

In the remainder of the sūrah, to close it, Allah (swt) speaks of the following matters, treated here in some detail. There is a famous account here, wa-idh akhadha rabbuk — or rather, since He is speaking of telling the Banū Isrāʾīl to fulfil the covenant, Allah mentions another covenant, one that applies universally to all human beings, which every one of us has given and none of us remembers, from verse 172. Does anyone remember it? What happens is this:

Wa-idh akhadha rabbuka min banī Ādama min ẓuhūrihim dhurriyyatahum wa-ashhadahum ʿalā anfusihim a-lastu bi-rabbikum qālū balā shahidnā. When Allah created Ādam, He drew out from his loins his entire progeny, in small forms like ants — everyone who was to come until the last of them, billions of them, in small forms. And Allah manifested Himself before them, and asked them: am I not your Lord? A-lastu bi-rabbikum. And they all said: of course You are. There was no cause to doubt. Nothing had yet corrupted their minds. They had only just come from the pure realm; they were not yet born. They had seen no corruption. They had seen no other view. So they said: of course You are — who else? That is a covenant. And we do not remember it. Does anyone remember it? Some in history are said to have claimed that they remember it. Does anyone remember this experience? Why, then, do we not remember it here? We are reminded of it in the Qur'an; the prophets tell us of it. We are thus reminded; and if we believe in it and act rightly, then in the Hereafter our book of deeds will be there, showing what we did; and this too will become a vivid memory in our minds. It will then be: yes, I do remember it now. And so it happens: a man does not remember a thing for a great while, and then something triggers the memory — yes, that happened when I was six years old. It happens among human beings. So in the Hereafter one will indeed remember it. One will remember giving this promise, this covenant, and will see also all that one did. If what one did accords with that promise, there is happiness; that is what is called saʿādah. And if what we did goes against what we then remember, that is shaqāwah. May Allah protect us from it. So Allah says: wa-kadhālika nufaṣṣilu al-āyāt.