Maryam · Makki · ayah 86 of 98

Maryam 19:86

وَنَسُوقُ ٱلْمُجْرِمِينَ إِلَىٰ جَهَنَّمَ وِرْدًا

“And will drive the criminals to Hell in thirst”

Saheeh International

Essence

While the God-conscious ride in as guests, the criminals are driven from behind like a thirsty herd to a watering place that holds only fire.

A reflection

Criminals, in the old sense of the word

The criminals. A modern reader hears the word and pictures a courtroom, a police record, a prison. Then they relax. Picture a man with a clean driving licence for thirty years who has never had so much as a parking fine. He reads criminals and assumes the ayah has nothing to say to him.

The Arabic word has a wider and older picture. The lexicons give the root as cutting off. Jirām was the date harvest, when the clusters were cut from the palms. Earning was called jarm, as if you cut off a share for yourself. A jurm, a crime, is earning of the worst kind. It is what a person harvests against himself.

So the mujrimūn are not only people with convictions. They are people who spent a lifetime cutting their own harvest of wrong, one cluster at a time, and are now carrying it.

A legal commentary says plainly that the word here covers both the disbelievers and the disobedient. It then notes that the very next ayah makes an exception. Believers who sinned may still be reached by intercession. So the ayah does not sort humanity into the convicted and the clean. It describes what a harvest of wrongdoing becomes, and leaves a door open beside it.

The question for the man with the clean licence is not whether he has a record. It is what he has been harvesting. A sharp word to a waiter. A long silence towards a brother. A prayer left until it was gone. Each one is a cluster cut.

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.