Al-Muddaththir · Makki · ayah 17 of 56

Al-Muddaththir 74:17

سَأُرْهِقُهُۥ صَعُودًا

“I will cover him with arduous torment.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Everything in his life was smoothed downhill; what is coming for him now only ever goes up.

A reflection

A slope with no summit

The lexicons picture this root as a steep pass, the kind of incline that costs real effort to climb, and the word borrows naturally into any hardship worth calling an uphill struggle: taṣaʿʿadani al-amr, the matter went uphill on me, a phrase the Arabs used for anything that strained them. A painful breath forcing its way out is suʿadaʾ, because the pain itself seems to climb on the way out of the body.

What the earliest commentary adds to this image matters more than its physical shape. Asked what this particular climb actually is, the tradition answers with a description rather than a location: a punishment with no rest in it anywhere, a hardship that offers no relief at any point along its length. An ordinary steep pass, however punishing, still has a top. A traveller climbing it can measure the remaining distance, anticipate the summit, draw strength from knowing the effort will eventually end. This climb is described with the one feature that removes exactly that comfort: no stated end, no promised rest, nothing to anticipate arriving at.

That is the detail worth sitting with longest. Most human hardship, even severe hardship, carries an implicit promise that it will resolve into something else eventually, which is part of what makes it bearable. This ayah describes a hardship built, specifically, without that promise.

It is worth noticing, too, how differently a climb feels depending on whether an end is visible. A hiker who can see the ridge line ahead paces themselves accordingly, trades short-term discomfort for a known, bounded distance, and finds the effort meaningful because it is heading somewhere definite. Remove the visible ridge line, and the same physical effort becomes a different experience entirely: not merely harder, but unmoored from any sense that the effort is accomplishing anything at all. This ayah describes exactly that removal, not simply more strain, but strain with the ridge line taken away.

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.