Al-Kahf · Makki · ayah 87 of 110

Al-Kahf 18:87

قَالَ أَمَّا مَن ظَلَمَ فَسَوْفَ نُعَذِّبُهُۥ ثُمَّ يُرَدُّ إِلَىٰ رَبِّهِۦ فَيُعَذِّبُهُۥ عَذَابًا نُّكْرًا

“He said, "As for one who wrongs,[796] we will punish him. Then he will be returned to his Lord, and He will punish him with a terrible punishment [i.e., Hellfire].”

Saheeh International

Essence

The first sentence he speaks with absolute power puts a ceiling on his own half of it.

A reflection

He drew the line around his own authority

This is the first thing the man says after being handed unlimited power, and it is a sentence about limits.

As for one who wrongs, we will punish him. Then he will be returned to his Lord, and He will punish him with a punishment he cannot place.

Look at the two halves. The first is his. The second is explicitly not.

A linguistic commentary notices the pronoun and draws a conclusion from it. He says returned to his Lord, not returned to you. That wording, it says, shows the earlier address had not come to him as direct revelation.

Whatever that settles, it settles something else first. The man had every reason to blur the line. He had been spoken to. He had been handed a people. He was the only authority within a thousand miles.

And his opening statement marks where his jurisdiction ends.

The same commentary notes that the royal plural here is simply how kings spoke. The punishing is ascribed to him because he orders it, not because he carries it out.

An incident commander at a fire draws a cordon on the plan in the first ten minutes. Inside it, everything is hers and she will answer for all of it. Outside it, she says plainly, is not hers to decide.

The crews need that line more than they need her courage. An officer with no stated edge is an officer who will eventually be found standing in somebody else's job while her own burns.

And there is a harder version of this for anyone with authority over people. The temptation is not usually to abuse power. It is to extend it into the place where only Allah has standing.

To decide not only what a person did but what they are. Not only the consequence but the verdict. Not only this world's penalty but the next one's.

He refused that in his first sentence, out loud, in front of his army. It could be quoted back at him for the rest of his reign.

The full entry has 5 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.