Al-Waqi'ah · Makki · ayah 45 of 96

Al-Waqi'ah 56:45

إِنَّهُمْ كَانُوا۟ قَبْلَ ذَٰلِكَ مُتْرَفِينَ

“Indeed they were, before that, indulging in affluence,”

Saheeh International

Essence

The word is passive: comfort was done to them, and it tipped them over.

A reflection

The comfort was done to them

An espaliered pear is a beautiful thing and a dependent one. It has been fed, watered, pruned, tied in and given the warmest wall in the garden. Take the wires away and it cannot hold itself up. Every advantage it was given went into fruit and none of it into a trunk.

The word in this ayah has that shape built into its grammar, and almost no translation shows it.

One lexicon says the root holds a single word: turfa, a special indulgence. A boy's family tarrafa him by giving him fine food and whatever is kept for favourites. The child is then mutraf: soft-bodied, pampered, handed whatever he craves. Another lexicon carries it further and calls the mutraf the man whom ease and wide living have made insolent. The comfort atrafa him. It tipped him over.

Notice the form, because it is the whole point. Mutraf is passive. The man did not do it. It was done to him.

That is a strange thing for a verse of warning to say, and one commentary meets it head on. Being mutraf, it argues, is not blame in itself. A man made comfortable has not thereby done wrong. What the word does is set up the ugliness of what follows. Ingratitude from someone on whom favour has been poured is the ugliest of ugly things.

So the ayah is not an accusation of wealth. It is a description of a condition that makes a particular failure likely, and then the next two ayat name the failure.

Which leaves a practical question for anyone whose life is comfortable, and in historical terms that is most of us. What have your advantages gone into? Fruit, or a trunk? Nobody minds being tied to a warm wall. The question is what happens the day the wires come off.

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.