Ar-Rahman · Madani · ayah 35 of 78

Ar-Rahman 55:35

يُرْسَلُ عَلَيْكُمَا شُوَاظٌ مِّن نَّارٍ وَنُحَاسٌ فَلَا تَنتَصِرَانِ

“There will be sent upon you a flame of fire and smoke,[1600] and you will not defend yourselves.”

Saheeh International

Essence

A smokeless flame and a flameless smoke, a forge with no smith's hand on it, will be sent on jinn and humankind, unhelped.

A reflection

The fire verses are not about other people

There is a quiet habit many believers have with passages like this one. They read them as information about other people. The fire is for the deniers, the arrogant, the ones in the news. The reader is somewhere safely to the side, nodding.

The ayah does not allow that position. It says: a flame of fire and smoke will be sent on you two, ʿalaykumā. The two are jinn and humankind, both kinds, addressed directly. There is no third-person "they" in the sentence at all.

One classical commentary looks carefully at the grammar and finds something both sobering and hopeful.

The ayah before used the plural: if you are able, all of you, to pass through. That, it says, shows their combined helplessness. Even gathered together, supporting each other, they cannot escape. This ayah switches to the dual: on you two. That, it says, is because the fire is sent on the two kinds, not on every single member of them. Some of both will be delivered from it by the grace of Allah.

Then it draws the line precisely. Being unable to flee is universal. Being unable to be rescued is not universal.

So the ayah is addressed to you, and the escape it closes is closed for you too. No one gets out by running. But rescue is still possible, and it comes from one direction only: His grace.

That is the opposite of the reading most of us carry. We assume we are outside the sentence and safe. The ayah says we are inside it, and that safety is not a place but a gift.

Read the passage again with yourself in it. Not "them". You two. Then ask Him, plainly, to be among those His grace delivers.

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.