Al-Waqi'ah · Makki · ayah 46 of 96

Al-Waqi'ah 56:46

وَكَانُوا۟ يُصِرُّونَ عَلَى ٱلْحِنثِ ٱلْعَظِيمِ

“And they used to persist in the great violation,[1612]”

Saheeh International

Essence

The verb is a knot pulled tight, and the noun is the breaking of an oath, which is a stranger charge than most readers notice.

A reflection

A knot, not a habit

A purse seine is a wall of net shot in a circle round a shoal. The wall by itself holds nothing; the fish can simply swim down and out underneath. What closes it is a line threaded through rings along the bottom edge. Haul that line and the base of the net draws together into a purse. The net did not get bigger. It got shut.

That image is the root of the verb in this ayah. One lexicon begins the root with tying. Ṣarra al-darāhim is to knot coins into a cloth, and the cloth is a ṣurra, a purse. The ṣirār is a cloth tied over a she-camel's udder so that the calf cannot suckle. Iṣrār belongs in that family: a resolve pulled tight. Another lexicon reads it as knotting yourself into a sin.

So the English "they used to persist" is too mild and too passive. Persisting sounds like continuing. This is closing.

The commentaries read it in exactly that register. One glosses it as being resolved upon it, intending no repentance. Another says they stayed on it and did not give it up. The Arabs used the word of remaining on a wrong and refusing to leave off. A third puts it in one word: they made a settled practice of it.

And notice the two halves of the image, because they belong together. A purse is tied shut to keep something in. The ṣirār is tied on to keep something out. Both are the same act seen from two sides, and so is this.

The man described here is not merely repeating a sin. He has knotted the thing in, and knotted the way out. The calf at the udder is the part of him that would have turned back.

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.