Al-Haqqah · Makki · ayah 37 of 52

Al-Haqqah 69:37

لَّا يَأْكُلُهُۥٓ إِلَّا ٱلْخَـٰطِـُٔونَ

“None will eat it except the sinners.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Only those who aimed at the wrong target on purpose, not everyone who ever simply missed, are the ones who eat this.

A reflection

Two very different kinds of missing the mark

The root kh-ṭ-ʾ pictures an arrow that misses its target. The Arabs split that single picture into two different words, and the split is not a technicality. Mukhṭiʾ names the archer who aimed correctly and still missed, through a slip, bad luck or honest limitation. Khāṭiʾ names the one who aimed at the wrong target altogether, on purpose.

This ayah uses the second word precisely, al-khāṭiʾūn, those who aimed wrongly by intent, not the first. That is not incidental vocabulary. It means the warning carried in this entire severe passage was never aimed at everyone who has ever made a mistake, which would include every human being who has lived. It was aimed specifically at people whose wrongdoing was not a slip but a chosen direction, sustained deliberately rather than stumbled into.

An employee who miscalculates a figure under pressure and corrects it the moment the error is found has made a mukhṭiʾ's mistake. A colleague who deliberately falsifies the same figure, aware the whole time of what the true number was, has made a khāṭiʾ's choice. Both might be described loosely in English as having 'got it wrong'. The distinction the Arabic insists on is exactly the one that matters when weighing what either of them actually did.

Anyone reading this passage and quietly fearing it describes their own honest failures has misread which word is being used. This ayah was never written for the archer who aimed well and still missed.

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.