Al-Ghashiyah · Makki · ayah 5 of 26

Al-Ghashiyah 88:5

تُسْقَىٰ مِنْ عَيْنٍ ءَانِيَةٍ

“They will be given drink from a boiling spring.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The desert's word for rescue, a spring, is turned inside out: water heated to its limit, offered as relief and making the thirst worse.

A reflection

The word for rescue, turned

In the desert, ʿayn was the most hopeful word a traveller could hear. It means an eye, and it means a spring. The lexicons say the spring is named for the eye's clearness and its water. To dig until water broke through was to reach the ground's 'eyes'. A caravan that found an ʿayn had found its life for another week.

Now the surah takes that word and turns it. Tusqā min ʿaynin āniya: they are given to drink from a spring that has reached the limit of its heat. The early commentators add that it has been heating since Allah created the heavens and the earth. Others say that if one drop fell on the mountains of this world, they would melt.

Notice the verb as well. Tusqā is passive: they are made to drink, given drink by another hand. They do not walk to this spring the way travellers walk to a well. It is brought to them.

The Quran sets the two drinks side by side elsewhere, in a single verse. It describes the garden promised to the mindful. Rivers of water that never goes stale, of milk whose taste never changes. Wine that delights its drinkers, and pure honey. Then it asks whether that is like one who stays in the Fire and is given scalding water that tears the insides apart (47:15).

This surah makes the same contrast across a few ayat. There are two springs in al-Ghāshiya. This one is āniya, heated to its limit. The one in the garden is jāriya, running freely (88:12). One word, ʿayn, for both. One destiny each.

A reader raised among taps may miss the shock. For the first hearers, a spring was mercy itself. To hear that word made into a torment was to hear how completely a life can turn a blessing into its opposite.

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.