As-Saffat · Makki · ayah 67 of 182

As-Saffat 37:67

ثُمَّ إِنَّ لَهُمْ عَلَيْهَا لَشَوْبًا مِّنْ حَمِيمٍ

“Then indeed, they will have after it a mixture of scalding water.”

Saheeh International

Essence

On top of the bitter fruit comes a drink, mixed with water heated to its limit: the burning inside is answered with more burning.

A reflection

What is mixed into the cup

On a railway platform in a hot country, a tea-seller pours from a dented kettle into small clay cups. Into each he splashes milk, then sugar, then a pinch of spice. Every stall on the platform sells tea. What makes his tea his is what he mixes into it.

The ayah uses a word for exactly that act. Shawb means mixing one thing into another. The lexicons give it a single sense. Milk was mixed with water. Honey was stirred into a drink, and honey itself was sometimes called shawb for that reason. In the whole Quran, the word appears only here.

So the drink of the people of the Fire is described by its mixture. The commentators say it is a drink blended with ḥamīm, water heated until its heat can go no further. Some say the scalding water mixes with the bitter fruit already inside them, so that the two become one ruinous blend.

Now listen to how the Quran describes the drinks of the righteous. They, too, are mixed. One commentator draws the contrast directly. The pure wine of the righteous has a mixture from Tasnīm, a spring from on high (83:27). Elsewhere, its mixture is camphor (76:5), or ginger (76:17). Every drink in the Garden is defined by something fragrant and cooling stirred into it.

The same idea, a drink with something added, runs both ways. One cup is mixed with a spring from the heights. The other is mixed with scalding water from the depths.

There is a quiet question here for our own lives. What we are is often decided less by the base than by what we mix in. Two people do the same job; one stirs in honesty and the other stirs in resentment. Two homes have the same walls; one is mixed with patience. The final mixtures only reveal what was being stirred in all along.

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.