Al-Waqi'ah · Makki · ayah 83 of 96

Al-Waqi'ah 56:83

فَلَوْلَآ إِذَا بَلَغَتِ ٱلْحُلْقُومَ

“Then why, when it [i.e., the soul at death] reaches the throat”

Saheeh International

Essence

The subject of the sentence is never named, and the verb is the one used for a message carried all the way to its hearer.

A reflection

The one word the sentence will not say

An old telegram from a ship would give the position, the time and the weather, and leave the news to the man receiving it. The form could not carry it. Everybody who handled such messages knew what the shape of one meant before the words were read.

This ayah is built on that kind of omission, and the grammarians will not let it pass.

There is no subject in the sentence. When it reaches the throat. What reaches? The word soul does not appear anywhere in it.

One commentary states the position flatly. No mention of it has gone before, because the sense is known. And it then quotes a line of pre-Islamic poetry to show that the Arabs spoke this way without explaining themselves. Umayy, what does wealth avail a young man, when one day he rattles and his chest is tight?

That line has no subject either. The poet names a sound and a chest, and the whole of what is happening is left out.

So the ayah is using a convention, and the convention has a purpose. A sentence that names the soul is about a doctrine. A sentence that leaves it out is about a room.

And the omission is why the passage is readable at all. Four ayat are coming about a scene that almost everybody has either been in or will be in. If the Qur'an had opened them with the full machinery of theology, the scene would have become a lesson.

Instead it does what a telegram does. It gives the position and lets you supply the rest.

And the position given is small and exact. Not the hour, not the illness, not the age. One place in the body, named without ceremony: the throat.

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.