Al-Waqi'ah · Makki · ayah 94 of 96

Al-Waqi'ah 56:94

وَتَصْلِيَةُ جَحِيمٍ

“And burning in Hellfire.”

Saheeh International

Essence

One root gives warming yourself at a fire and being held in one, and the surah has already shown you the first.

A reflection

One root for warming and for roasting

The verb in this ayah belongs to a root with four senses, and the lexicons list them in an order that is hard to forget.

Exposing something to fire. Warming oneself at a fire. Entering fire and suffering its heat, being made to burn. And fuel: what a fire is fed with.

So one small family of words covers a man holding his hands out to a flame and a man held in one.

And the Book uses the gentle sense. When Musa was sent to the mountain, he said to his family: stay here, I have seen a fire. Perhaps I will bring you news from it, or a brand, so that you may warm yourselves. The last word is from this root.

That is the ordinary human use of fire, in the Book's own vocabulary. A man fetches a burning stick home so his family can be warm.

And this ayah uses the same letters for the opposite.

Which means the difference between the two is not the fire. It is the distance, and which way the holding runs. In one, a man holds the fire. In the other, the fire holds the man.

The commentaries gloss the word here as being made to burn, and as being settled in it. One of them puts it as entry into the Fire. Another as remaining in the Blaze and suffering the kinds of its punishment.

So the ayah does not say burning. It says a roasting, which is a word about a position maintained rather than an event.

And the reason to notice that is the surah's own: twenty ayat ago it said the fire you strike was made a reminder. The gentle sense and the severe sense of one root are both in this surah, twenty ayat apart.

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.