Al-Hajj · Madani · ayah 2 of 78

Al-Hajj 22:2

يَوْمَ تَرَوْنَهَا تَذْهَلُ كُلُّ مُرْضِعَةٍ عَمَّآ أَرْضَعَتْ وَتَضَعُ كُلُّ ذَاتِ حَمْلٍ حَمْلَهَا وَتَرَى ٱلنَّاسَ سُكَـٰرَىٰ وَمَا هُم بِسُكَـٰرَىٰ وَلَـٰكِنَّ عَذَابَ ٱللَّهِ شَدِيدٌ

“On the Day you see it every nursing mother will be distracted from that [child] she was nursing, and every pregnant woman will abort her pregnancy, and you will see the people [appearing] intoxicated while they are not intoxicated; but the punishment of Allāh is severe.”

Saheeh International

Essence

On that Day a mother's hold on her feeding child, the strongest grip on earth, will open, and crowds will reel with nothing to drink.

A reflection

The love was never false

Readers often flinch at this ayah. A nursing mother forgets her baby. A pregnant woman loses what she carries. It can sound like a picture of love failing, even of cruelty.

Read the words closely, and they say the opposite about love.

The ayah does not say murḍiʿ, a woman who nurses. It says murḍiʿa, with an extra letter. The linguists explain the difference. Murḍiʿ describes a woman whose role is nursing, even when she is not doing it. Murḍiʿa describes a woman in the very act, the breast in the child's mouth. One commentator draws the scene. When the terror catches her mid-feed, she pulls the breast from his mouth.

A classical scholar explains why that detail matters. A mother might forget a child who is out of her hands. But while he feeds at her breast, she will not let go. Only something greater, in her own eyes, could break that hold.

So the ayah is not measuring the weakness of a mother's love. It uses that love as a measuring rod. It was the strongest bond the listeners knew, and the Day outweighs it.

Picture paramedics at a motorway crash at night. They find a young mother curled around her infant in the back seat. Her own arm is broken, and she has not noticed. She lets them treat her only once the baby is lifted out, crying and unhurt.

That is the force the ayah takes for granted. It assumes you know it, because everyone does. Then it asks you to imagine a day that makes even her hands open.

One more word deepens it. ʿAmmā arḍaʿat: from what she was nursing. The Arabic uses mā, 'what', where we might expect 'whom'. A later commentary sees intent in this. In her stunned mind the child has become a 'what'. She knows something is in her arms, but not, for that moment, who.

The love was never false. The ayah honours it by making it the measure. The Day is simply heavier.

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.