Az-Zukhruf · Makki · ayah 74 of 89

Az-Zukhruf 43:74

إِنَّ ٱلْمُجْرِمِينَ فِى عَذَابِ جَهَنَّمَ خَـٰلِدُونَ

“Indeed, the criminals will be in the punishment of Hell, abiding eternally.”

Saheeh International

Essence

After the Garden, one line on the other end: those who harvested wrong against themselves remain in what they gathered.

A reflection

A harvest cut with your own hand

Inna al-mujrimīn: indeed the criminals. The English word sounds like a courtroom. The Arabic began in an orchard.

The root j-r-m means cutting off. Jirām was the date harvest, when the clusters were cut from the palms. The shorn wool of a sheep was jarīm. Earning was called jarm, as if you cut off a share for yourself. A mother eagle was her chick's jarīma: its provider, the one who gathered for it. And a crime, jurm, is earning of the worst kind: what a person gathers against himself.

So a mujrim, at the root, is a harvester. One major commentator explains the word in exactly those terms here. They committed the crime of disbelief in this world, and so they reaped its harvest in the next.

Picture a man who has told small lies for most of his life. To his wife about where he had been. To his boss about why the work was late. To his friends about money. None of the lies seemed to matter much. At sixty he is told he has a serious heart condition. He tells his family, honestly, frightened. They exchange glances. Nobody quite believes him. He realises, sitting at the kitchen table, that he cut this harvest himself, one small lie at a time.

That is the logic beneath the ayah. Hell is not described as something that falls on people from nowhere. It is the field they planted, at harvest time.

This does not reduce Allah's role; He is the One who judges and requites. But it removes the idea of arbitrariness. The next ayah says it plainly: We did not wrong them, but they were the wrongdoers (43:76).

For the reader, the root carries a quiet daily question. What am I cutting for myself today? Each choice is a cluster gathered. The harvest is coming, and it will be mine.

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.