Al-Waqi'ah · Makki · ayah 42 of 96

Al-Waqi'ah 56:42

فِى سَمُومٍ وَحَمِيمٍ

“[They will be] in scorching fire and scalding water”

Saheeh International

Essence

The two coolest things we know are turned against them, so that the Fire itself is left to your reasoning.

A reflection

Why the air and the water, and not the Fire

In a modern foundry nobody measures the furnace. Everyone already knows the furnace is hot. What is measured, hour by hour, is the air: a wet-bulb reading taken where the men stand, because that figure decides whether work stops. The furnace is a known quantity. The air is the one that kills people.

One commentary asks the obvious question about this ayah and gives a superb answer. Why mention a scorching wind and boiling water here, and say nothing about the Fire and its horrors?

Because, it says, this is a pointing from the lower to the higher. Their air, which blows over them, is a poison wind. Their water, which they cry out for, is boiling. And air and water are the two coolest things there are, and in this world the two most useful. So what do you suppose their fire is like?

Then it makes the point that settles it. If He had simply said they are in a fire, we would have measured it by our own fires. We have seen nothing hotter than what we have seen. So He named the coolest things instead and made them the hottest, and left the rest to you.

That is not a flourish. It is a method, and it runs through the whole second half of this surah. Later it will argue the raising of the dead from a drop of fluid, a seed and a cooking fire. Always the small thing in your hand, used to establish the enormous thing you refuse.

And there is an honesty in it worth noticing. The ayah does not reach for words we cannot test. It takes two things every human being has felt, and inverts them.

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.