At-Tahrim · Madani · ayah 10 of 12

At-Tahrim 66:10

ضَرَبَ ٱللَّهُ مَثَلًا لِّلَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا۟ ٱمْرَأَتَ نُوحٍ وَٱمْرَأَتَ لُوطٍ ۖ كَانَتَا تَحْتَ عَبْدَيْنِ مِنْ عِبَادِنَا صَـٰلِحَيْنِ فَخَانَتَاهُمَا فَلَمْ يُغْنِيَا عَنْهُمَا مِنَ ٱللَّهِ شَيْـًٔا وَقِيلَ ٱدْخُلَا ٱلنَّارَ مَعَ ٱلدَّٰخِلِينَ

“Allāh presents an example of those who disbelieved: the wife of Noah and the wife of Lot. They were under two of Our righteous servants but betrayed them,[1710] so they [i.e., those prophets] did not avail them from Allāh at all, and it was said, "Enter the Fire with those who enter."”

Saheeh International

Essence

Nearness to two of the most righteous men who ever lived could not stand in for belief of their own — each soul answers entirely on its own standing.

A reflection

A betrayal that was never what it might sound like

It matters, before anything else is said about this ayah, to be exact about what fakhānatāhumā actually names. The Companion closest to this verse's interpretation stated it as plainly as language allows: by Allah, neither woman ever committed zinā. No wife of a prophet ever did. The betrayal here was never of that kind, and the sources are united in saying so.

What it names instead is opposition to the message itself, carried out from inside each household. Nūḥ's wife told people her husband was simply insane, and whenever anyone believed what he taught, she informed the powerful men working against him. Lūṭ's wife signalled to her own people whenever a guest arrived at his house, drawing the very danger toward him that he was trying to shelter his guests from. In both cases the harm done was to the mission each man carried, not to the marriage in the sense the English word 'betrayal' might first suggest.

This distinction is not a minor technicality. Reading this ayah as being about marital unfaithfulness misses its entire point, and does real injustice to two righteous prophets and, in its own way, to the two women themselves, whose actual fault was a settled, active disbelief, not the thing some readers assume. What stands recorded here is a rejection of faith carried out through informing on believers and endangering guests — serious in exactly the way disbelief and active harm to others are serious, and nothing more, and nothing other, than that.

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.