Al-Haqqah · Makki · ayah 34 of 52

Al-Haqqah 69:34

وَلَا يَحُضُّ عَلَىٰ طَعَامِ ٱلْمِسْكِينِ

“Nor did he encourage the feeding of the poor.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The same old failure to urge feeding the poor is read here not as a warning to the living but as a charge against a man already seized.

A reflection

A charge read out, not a warning given

This near-identical wording returns the full force of its meaning at its first home in Surah al-Ma'un (107:3), where it indicts a still-living reader directly, exposing how correct ritual without real compassion is its own kind of hollowness. Here, the same words land differently simply by where they sit. This man has already been seized and shackled (69:30), already cast into the Fire (69:31). What is being named now is not a chance to change course but the settled reason the course was never changed: the grammar matches 69:33's continuous kāna, a habit held for a lifetime, not a single missed chance.

So where 107:3 asks a reader to examine themselves while there is still time, this ayah simply completes the record of why there is no more time left for this particular man. The urging he never gave is now simply one more fact read into the account.

The full entry has 2 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.