كَلَّا لَيُنۢبَذَنَّ فِى ٱلْحُطَمَةِ
The function of kallā was treated in detail in the preceding section (al-Takāthur 102/3): it conveys both rejection (radd, the erasing of a judgement) and restraint (zajr).
Here the target of the particle is very clear, and clearer than it was in al-Takāthur. There kallā was cutting off an assumption that had not been spoken. Here what is cut off is the last word of the preceding verse: akhladah — it made him immortal.
The sūra, that is, first set the supposition up as it stood, and then demolished it with a single word. Yaḥsabu anna mālahu akhladah — kallā. Between the two sentences there is no explanation, no proof, no argument. Only the rejection.
This is meaningful in point of rhetoric. If a claim is refuted with a proof, that means the claim has been counted worth discussing. A claim cut off with kallā has not been taken into the discussion at all.
The verb carries three layers, exactly as in al-Takāthur 102/6:
1. An oath that is not spoken 2. Lām al-qasam — the lām of the oath 3. Nūn al-taʾkīd al-thaqīla — the heavy nūn of emphasis
And the verb is in the passive: "he will be flung" — who does the flinging is not said. This is a choice that will run to the end of the sūra: in the eighth verse too it will say "it is closed", and who closes it will not be said.
The effect of the passive form here is this: the man is dropped entirely into a passive position. Two verses earlier he was the subject — he was gathering, he was counting, he was supposing. Now he is handled like an object.
Root: ن-ب-ذ. Its sense in the lexicon: to throw a thing away because one counts it worthless, to fling it aside as of no account, to be rid of it.
The distinguishing property of the word is that it places a value judgement inside the act of throwing. Not every throwing is nabdh; nabdh is the counting of the thing thrown as useless.
From the same root, نبيذ (nabīdh): the drink made by throwing dates or grapes into water. The word comes from "that which has been thrown".
- "A group of those who were given the Book threw the Book of God behind their backs." (al-Baqara 2/101)
- "They threw it behind their backs and took a small price for it." (Āl ʿImrān 3/187)
- "Whenever they made a covenant, a group among them broke it and threw it away." (al-Baqara 2/100)
- "We seized him and his armies and flung them into the sea." (al-Qaṣaṣ 28/40; also al-Dhāriyāt 51/40)
- "We cast him onto the bare open ground." (al-Ṣāffāt 37/145)
This list sets up the irony of the sūra. Nabdh is the verb used in the Qurʾān especially for throwing the Book and the covenant behind one's back — that is, for counting an obligation worthless and being rid of it.
In the sūra the same verb is applied, this time, to the man himself. He who counted worthless and threw away is counted worthless and thrown away.
And there is a tighter opposition: جمع (he gathered) and نبذ (he was flung) are exact contraries. To gather is to bring together what is scattered; nabdh is to be rid of what is together. For a whole lifetime the man was the party that gathered; at the end he becomes the thing that is thrown away. This opposition set up between the two verses is the sūra's clearest literary move.
Root: ح-ط-م. To break, to shatter, to crumble, to grind to powder. To break a thing that is hard and whole and reduce it to debris.
From the same root, حُطام (ḥuṭām): crumbs, debris, a dry and crumbled remnant. The Qurʾān uses this in two places, and in both of them for crops:
These two verses are directly meaningful for the sūra. Ḥuṭām is the state at the end of the harvest: what has grown, ripened, yellowed and crumbled away. It is, that is, the final state of a thing that has accumulated. The name of the place at which the man who accumulates wealth will arrive comes from the same root as the state at which the accumulated crop will arrive.
"O ants! Enter your dwellings, lest Solomon (Sulaymān) and his armies crush you without being aware of it." (al-Naml 27/18)
The verb here is from the same root and describes exactly being crushed underfoot and ground to powder.
The name of the fire, that is, has been given in the same intensive measure as the name of the man. The man is "one who breaks much, who has made breaking his habit" — the making small of people. And the fire too is "one that breaks much" — but in the literal sense, by grinding to pieces.
That the pattern should be repeated in this way cannot be counted a coincidence; the sūra uses the same measure in three words, and all three within four verses of the sūra. The punishment is described in the grammar of the offence.
According to what the lexicographers record, this pattern was used for people as well: it is transmitted that a man who eats much and consumes greedily, or a shepherd harsh with his flock, was called ḥuṭama. That the word can be applied to a human being too makes the pairing in the sūra still more visible.
Al-Ḥuṭama among the names of Hell. The Qurʾān uses several names for Hell: jahannam, nār, jaḥīm, saqar, laẓā, saʿīr, hāwiya and ḥuṭama. Each name brings one aspect of the fire forward. Ḥuṭama occurs in the Qurʾān in this sūra alone — in verses 4 and 5, twice.
And the choice is apt: two sūras earlier, in al-Takāthur, the same place had been named jaḥīm — by the fierceness of the flame. Here the same place is named by the function of grinding to pieces. Why? Because the fault of the man here was gathering and making whole. The name of punishment that fits him is the one that scatters and crumbles.