Al-Haqqah · Makki · ayah 9 of 52

Al-Haqqah 69:9

وَجَآءَ فِرْعَوْنُ وَمَن قَبْلَهُۥ وَٱلْمُؤْتَفِكَـٰتُ بِٱلْخَاطِئَةِ

“And there came Pharaoh and those before him and the overturned cities[1738] with sin.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The list quickly widens from two desert peoples to an empire and overturned cities, because no scale of power or sophistication sits outside this reckoning.

A reflection

Not a slip: a choice

A court distinguishes carefully between two people who each cause a death. One made every reasonable effort to avoid it and still, tragically, did not; the law calls that manslaughter, and treats it differently from someone who intended exactly what happened. Both outcomes are identical. The law's entire judgement turns on which kind of act produced them.

Arabic preserves the same distinction inside a single root. Akhṭaʾa is an archer's arrow missing the target despite a careful aim: an honest mistake, meaning well and doing otherwise. Khaṭiʾa, from the same letters, is choosing to do what should not be done, knowingly. This ayah names Pharaoh, the nations before him, and the overturned cities together as destroyed "bi-l-khāṭiʾah", by the sin, using the form that names a deliberate choice, not the form for an innocent miss.

That distinction matters for how this history should be read. These were not people who aimed at the truth and simply fell short through honest confusion, the way anyone might misjudge a hard question in good faith. The word chosen for their downfall is the one Arabic reserves for aiming away from the truth on purpose, repeatedly, across an empire and several cities, over a long enough time that it had become their deliberate direction rather than an occasional lapse.

That is worth remembering whenever this kind of history gets read as simply unlucky, people caught by circumstances beyond their control they never really had a fair chance against. The word used here does not describe bad luck of that kind. It describes an aim, sustained and repeatedly chosen, that happened, every single time it mattered, to miss exactly where it should have landed.

The full entry has 5 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.