Al-Ma'arij · Makki · ayah 16 of 44

Al-Ma'arij 70:16

نَزَّاعَةً لِّلشَّوَىٰ

“A remover of exteriors.[1752]”

Saheeh International

Essence

It strips away, again and again, exactly the parts a person always assumed were too minor to matter.

A reflection

A word for tearing something out by force

The root behind this word pictures forceful removal, something pulled out of its place against resistance, not peeled away gently but wrenched loose. The intensified form used here adds repetition to that force: not a single tearing but a tearing that keeps happening, over and over, as though the task is never actually finished and must be started again.

That repetition is worth sitting with on its own. A single violent act, however severe, at least has an end point, a moment after which it is over. This word describes something closer to a process with no natural conclusion, forceful removal as an ongoing activity rather than a completed event. Whatever is being stripped away keeps needing to be stripped away again, which says something about both the severity of what is happening and its horrifying continuity.

Commentators describe this exact action applied, specifically, to the scalp and the extremities, the skin peeled entirely from the head and the limbs. The image is deliberately physical and specific rather than left as a vague abstraction of suffering; this verse wants a reader to actually picture something, not simply register that punishment of an unspecified kind exists.

The full entry has 7 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.