Sad · Makki · ayah 59 of 88

Sad 38:59

هَـٰذَا فَوْجٌ مُّقْتَحِمٌ مَّعَكُمْ ۖ لَا مَرْحَبًۢا بِهِمْ ۚ إِنَّهُمْ صَالُوا۟ ٱلنَّارِ

“[Its inhabitants will say], "This is a company bursting in with you. No welcome for them. Indeed, they will burn in the Fire."”

Saheeh International

Essence

In the Fire the word of welcome is turned inside out: of the crowd that followed them in, the leaders say, no room for them.

A reflection

No room for them

At his daughter's wedding, a father stands at the door of the hall for two hours. Every guest who comes in, he takes by the hand and says 'marḥaba', and means it. Cousins from three cities, the neighbours' children, an old colleague he barely remembers. The word is the whole of his hospitality in one breath.

Marḥaban comes from raḥb, wide space. To say it to a guest was to say: you have come to a wide place, not a narrow one. In this ayah it is turned round. 'Lā marḥaban bihim': no welcome to them, a wish that their place be narrow.

The Quran uses the same root in a scene from this life, and it is about numbers. At Ḥunayn the believers were pleased with how many they were. Then their great number 'availed you nothing, and the earth, for all its width, closed in on you' (9:25). The lesson there was that a crowd is no protection. A large army did not stop the ground from narrowing.

This ayah turns the same lesson on the leaders of the transgressors. On most readings, it is they who speak. A crowd arrives behind them: their audience, their supporters, the numbers they once counted on. In the world those numbers felt like room: room to manoeuvre, to win arguments, to stay in charge. In the Fire they are only more people in a narrow place. And the first word the leaders find for them is the exact reverse of a host's.

Hospitality is one of the clearest tests of a heart. In this world we still hold the word in our hands. Say it generously, especially to those who are new, poor or unimpressive. The doors we keep now are practice for the doors we will meet.

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.