Ad-Dukhan · Makki · ayah 56 of 59

Ad-Dukhan 44:56

لَا يَذُوقُونَ فِيهَا ٱلْمَوْتَ إِلَّا ٱلْمَوْتَةَ ٱلْأُولَىٰ ۖ وَوَقَىٰهُمْ عَذَابَ ٱلْجَحِيمِ

“They will not taste death therein except the first death, and He will have protected them from the punishment of Hellfire”

Saheeh International

Essence

In the Garden there is no more death after the first, and the mindful are shielded by their Lord from the blazing Fire.

A reflection

The deniers' sentence, returned as a promise

Lā yadhūqūna fīhā al-mawta illā al-mawtata al-ūlā: they will not taste death there, except the first death.

Twenty-one ayat earlier, the deniers of Makkah gave their creed. In hiya illā mawtatunā al-ūlā: there is nothing but our first death, and we will not be raised (44:35).

Now the same words come back. Al-mawtata al-ūlā, the first death. But the meaning is turned inside out. For the deniers, the first death was the end of everything. For the mindful, it is the only death they will ever know.

The concise commentaries explain it simply. They will not taste death in the Garden after the first death they tasted in the world.

Two women in the same office say the same sentence on the same Friday afternoon. It's my last day here. One has just been told her contract will not be renewed. She clears her desk with shaking hands. The other is retiring to the cottage by the sea she has saved for all her life. She hands round cake. The same words. Two completely different futures.

The surah does this deliberately. It lets the deniers speak their sentence, then hands the sentence to the believers with a new meaning. Both groups will die the first death. What follows it is what divides them.

There is a gentleness in the reversal. The deniers feared nothing after death, and found everything. The believers feared what lay after death, and are told: nothing more of it. The first death is the last one.

Every reader will one day say the deniers' words in some form: this is my first death. The surah asks which meaning they will carry.

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.