An-Nisa · Madani · ayah 93 of 176

An-Nisa 4:93

وَمَن يَقْتُلْ مُؤْمِنًا مُّتَعَمِّدًا فَجَزَآؤُهُۥ جَهَنَّمُ خَـٰلِدًا فِيهَا وَغَضِبَ ٱللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَلَعَنَهُۥ وَأَعَدَّ لَهُۥ عَذَابًا عَظِيمًا

“But whoever kills a believer intentionally - his recompense is Hell, wherein he will abide eternally, and Allāh has become angry with him and has cursed him and has prepared for him a great punishment.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Deliberately taking a believer's life draws one of the Quran's heaviest warnings; a single life weighs more with Allah than the whole world.

A reflection

Five weights in one sentence

Read the ayah slowly and count. His recompense is Hell. Abiding in it. Allah is angry with him. Allah has cursed him. And He has prepared for him a great punishment. Five weights are laid on one act in a single sentence. One commentary calls it a grave address, full of threat, thunder and lightning.

Why such force? Think about what deliberate killing claims. The killer decides that another person's life is his to end. He takes a power that belongs to the Giver of life alone. It is the ego at its most swollen: one human being acting as if he were master of another's existence.

The ayah answers that claim from above. The One who actually owns life speaks, and the would-be master is shown to be a servant who has stolen. The Prophet ﷺ said, as both Sahihs record, that the first matter judged between people on the Day of Resurrection will be blood.

So the ayah shrinks an ego that thinks it can decide who lives. It also shrinks smaller versions of the same pride: treating some lives as cheaper than others, or shrugging at deaths that seem far away.

Is this anger a sign of a harsh God? Consider the alternative. A god who did not care when the innocent were killed would not be merciful; he would be indifferent. Allah is free of all need (35:15). His anger here serves no need of His own. It is on behalf of the victim, who can no longer speak for himself.

One root image completes the picture. The word for cursing pictures a wolf chased away from the camp, driven off and kept at a distance. The killer drove a life out of the world. The warning is that he himself may be driven far.

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.