Al-Waqi'ah · Makki · ayah 52 of 96

Al-Waqi'ah 56:52

لَـَٔاكِلُونَ مِن شَجَرٍ مِّن زَقُّومٍ

“Will be eating from trees of zaqqūm”

Saheeh International

Essence

The name of this tree is not botany; it is the sound of swallowing something down whole because there is nothing else.

A reflection

Eating is a word for wearing away

A lathe tool does two things at once and the second one is invisible for a while. It takes metal off the work, and the work takes metal off it. A tool that has cut a hundred components looks fine and is not fine. Measure the finished parts and they are drifting, a thousandth of an inch at a time. The cutting edge has been eaten by what it was cutting.

That is the Arabic word for eating, and English does not carry it. One lexicon says the root has many branches but one core: diminishing, wearing away. Food is eaten and is gone. Fire eats firewood. Stones wear down nails. Age eats the teeth. And ukul is the fruit a tree gives, while a man's ukul is his portion of this world.

So the verb at the head of this ayah is not a neutral word about consumption. It is a word about something being used up.

The Quran uses it that way of something else, too, and the usage is famous. Do not spy on one another and do not backbite, it says. Then it asks: would any of you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother (49:12)? The root is the same. What backbiting does to a man's name is what fire does to firewood.

And that gives this ayah a dimension most readers miss. The people being addressed spent their lives eating in the root's full sense. The portion of this world taken and used up. The reputations of others consumed in their absence. The years worn away a day at a time, like a tool cutting without being resharpened.

Now they are told what they will be eating. One verb, one root, and the whole life it describes.

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.