Ash-Shu'ara · Makki · ayah 156 of 227

Ash-Shu'ara 26:156

وَلَا تَمَسُّوهَا بِسُوٓءٍ فَيَأْخُذَكُمْ عَذَابُ يَوْمٍ عَظِيمٍ

“And do not touch her with harm, lest you be seized by the punishment of a terrible day."”

Saheeh International

Essence

Salih draws the line at the lightest touch of harm and names its cost in advance: a day made terrible by what falls in it.

A reflection

The line drawn at a touch

Salih did not say 'do not kill her'. He said lā tamassūhā bi-sūʾ: do not touch her with harm. The root of massa pictures a hand laid on a thing, so that the touch is actually felt. The prohibition begins there, at the first point of contact, long before the knife.

The commentators list what the touch might be. A blow, a wound, the hamstringing that finally came. One concise commentary puts it simply: anything that would hurt her, from striking her to killing her. The command was not drawn around the worst act. It was drawn around the first small one.

A mountain guide leads a group along a snowy ridge. To their left the snow curls out over the drop in a smooth lip, a cornice. It looks solid. It looks like ground. She sets the rope line a full ten metres back from where the edge appears to be. One young man asks why so far. 'Because the real edge is under your feet before you see it,' she says. 'If I put the line at the drop, someone dies at the line.'

This is how the Quran often guards people. Adam and his wife were told not to eat from the tree, but the words were lā taqrabā: do not come near it (2:35). Here Thamud are told not even to lay a harmful hand on her. Great wrongs seldom begin as great wrongs. They begin as a touch that tests whether anything happens.

It is worth asking where your own rope line sits. Is it at the drop, or far enough back to hold?

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.