Ali 'Imran · Madani · ayah 197 of 200

Ali 'Imran 3:197

مَتَـٰعٌ قَلِيلٌ ثُمَّ مَأْوَىٰهُمْ جَهَنَّمُ ۚ وَبِئْسَ ٱلْمِهَادُ

“[It is but] a small enjoyment; then their [final] refuge is Hell, and wretched is the resting place.”

Saheeh International

Essence

A brief enjoyment, then the place they come home to is the Fire, and wretched is the bed they smoothed for themselves.

A reflection

A word that means coming home

The word the ayah uses for their destination is maʾwā, and it is a warm word.

The lexicons give its root two branches. The first is drawing in. Camels coming home to their people at nightfall. Birds pressing close against the cold. A wound drawing together as it heals. Maʾwā is the place anything returns to, by night or by day. The second branch is tenderness. Awā lahu means his heart went out to him in pity. That is established in the sources, not a reading imposed on them.

So the sentence does not say their punishment is the Fire. It says the place they come home to is the Fire.

A woman comes back after four years working overseas. She has imagined the arrival a hundred times, and when it happens it is not the airport or the taxi that undoes her. It is standing in her mother's hall, on a carpet she has never once thought about, hearing a clock she had forgotten existed. She sits down on the bottom stair and cries, and could not tell you why.

That sensation is one of the strongest a human being has. Something in us runs all week on the thought of the door at the end of it. A man working away counts Thursdays. A child at the school gate scans the row of faces for one.

This ayah takes that exact instinct and tells you where, for some, it is pointing. Not a sentence imposed from outside, but an arrival. The place the whole journey was quietly heading for.

Which turns the question from how bad it will be into something harder. What am I travelling towards. Everyone is going home to somewhere, and the word does not care whether you chose the destination deliberately.

The full entry has 7 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.