As-Saffat · Makki · ayah 66 of 182

As-Saffat 37:66

فَإِنَّهُمْ لَـَٔاكِلُونَ مِنْهَا فَمَالِـُٔونَ مِنْهَا ٱلْبُطُونَ

“And indeed, they will eat from it and fill with it their bellies.”

Saheeh International

Essence

They loathe the devil-headed fruit, yet they will eat it and stuff their bellies full, because nothing else is left to eat.

A reflection

Eating what you loathe

It is one in the morning. A man stands at the open fridge eating cold rice out of the pan with a fork. He is not hungry. He is not enjoying it. He knows he will feel worse in ten minutes. He keeps eating.

Most of us know some version of that moment. Not always with food. Sometimes it is a quarrel we keep restarting, a show we do not like, a person we know is bad for us. We take in the very thing we dislike, and we take it in fully.

The ayah begins with a small word that carries a whole argument: fa, so. The ayat before have just described the tree. It grows from the root of the blaze. Its fruit looks like devils' heads. So they will eat from it. The sentence is built to make the listener flinch. Why would anyone eat that?

The commentators offer two answers, and both are unsettling. One is hunger. They eat it despite its ugliness because their hunger is so severe. A theologian adds an observation about human nature. A person caught in great harm, he says, will sometimes seek relief in something close to it in harm. When the pain is overwhelming, the next bad thing looks like rescue.

The other answer is compulsion. Some commentators say the keepers of the Fire force them to eat it, to complete their punishment.

Hold the first answer up to the light, because it describes a pattern that begins long before the Hereafter. A hungry heart reaches for what is nearest, not what is good. Loneliness eats from anger. Boredom eats from cruelty. A soul that has refused the provision of Allah does not stop being hungry. It simply eats whatever grows where it has chosen to live.

The question for us is not only what we eat, but where we have planted ourselves.

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.