Ya-Sin · Makki · ayah 63 of 83

Ya-Sin 36:63

هَـٰذِهِۦ جَهَنَّمُ ٱلَّتِى كُنتُمْ تُوعَدُونَ

“This is the Hellfire which you were promised.”

Saheeh International

Essence

One word, "this", turns a lifetime of warnings into something standing in front of you, and the warnings are called a promise.

A reflection

Not a scare story but a promise kept

Many modern readers carry a quiet assumption about ayat like this one. Hell is a scare story. It was useful to frighten unruly tribes, or children, and it may well never happen. Even believers can hold it at that distance, as a rhetorical device rather than a place.

The ayah answers in its verb. Allatī kuntum tūʿadūn: which you were being promised. The form is continuous. One commentary spells it out. This is the Jahannam you were promised again and again, on the tongues of the messengers and those who passed their message on. Another says it was promised in the world for disbelief in Allah and for denying His messengers.

Then notice the word itself. The root of promise holds two pictures the first hearers knew well. After rain, a tribe's land was said to be promising when its first green shoots showed. And the stallion's roar just before he charged was his waʿīd, his threat. One root holds both the green shoot and the roar: words that make the future felt now.

The Arabs counted a broken promise as a kind of lie. So when the Quran calls this a promise, it is staking its truthfulness on it. Eleven ayat earlier, the resurrected say exactly that. This is what the Most Merciful promised, and the messengers told the truth.

A scare story is something a teller can drop when it has done its work. A promise has to be kept. That is the difference this ayah insists on, at the edge of the place itself.

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.