al-Dukhān 44:47-48

Khudhūhu fa'ʿtilūhu ilā sawāʾi'l-jaḥīm · Thumma ṣubbū fawqa raʾsihi min ʿadhābi'l-ḥamīm

"'Seize him and drag him into the very middle of the blaze. Then pour over his head of the punishment of scalding water.'"

There are three plural imperatives: khudhū, iʿtilū, ṣubbū. And the addressee of none of them is specified.

This verse was already cited in al-Ḥāqqa and the finding there was this:

"And the addressee is not stated. To whom is the command given? The verse does not say. This is a settled form for such scenes in the Qurʾān: 'Seize him and drag him into the middle of the blaze!' (al-Dukhān 44/47). There too the addressee is nameless. The not naming of the addressee depersonalises the scene. The command is given not to a person but to a working."

I rely on that treatment and do not repeat it.

What is to be added here is a contrast — I give it as my own reading: the addressee of the commands is nameless, but the object of the commands is singular and definite: khudhūhu — "seize him". There is a single person in the scene, and around him a nameless working.

And this prepares the forty-ninth verse: the nameless ones will not speak; what is spoken will be said to that single person.

The root was treated in al-Qalam (in the discussion of the word ʿutull) and this verse was already cited there:

"One who drags off. The verb ʿatala means 'to seize a man by the collar and drag him'; the Qurʾān uses it: 'Seize him and drag him into the middle of the blaze' (al-Dukhān 44/47 — fa'ʿtilūhu)."

And the conclusion recorded in al-Qalam looks directly to this place:

"ʿutull is one who has brute strength enough to drag a man, and sees no objection to using it."

In al-Qalam, then, the word derived from this root was the attribute of a guilty man; in al-Dukhān the same root, as a verb, describes what is done to that man.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the shared root of the two verses: the principle recorded in al-Burūj works once again — the verdict is announced in the language of the offence. The one who drags is dragged.

And the particle fāʾ: khudhūhu fa'ʿtilūhu. No interval. There is no gap between the seizing and the dragging.

Root: س-و-ي. Its concrete sense: equality, equivalence. Sawāʾ — the middle of a thing: the point equidistant from every side.

The choice of word is worth recording.

The verse does not say "drag him into the blaze", it says "into the sawāʾ of the blaze".

I give this as my own reading, and its ground is the definition of the word: the middle is the place that has no edge. A man at the edge of a thing is near the way out. For a man in the middle every direction is equal.

The word, that is, reports not a distance but a directionlessness.

ٱلْجَحِيم — the root ج-ح-م. Its concrete sense: the flaring, the fierce heating of a fire. Jaḥīm — a fiercely burning fire.

And the word occurs twice in the sūra:

The same word: for one the place of arrival, for the other the thing guarded against.

I record this as a verifiable repetition within the sūra.

The root was treated in al-Fajr and ʿAbasa, and this verse was already cited in the al-Fajr discussion:

"Another use in the Qurʾān shows the weight of the word: 'Then pour over his head of the punishment of scalding water' (al-Dukhān 44/48). The same verb, in the same direction."

And the description recorded in al-Fajr should be carried over here: "A liquid is a thing that has no shape of its own and seeps everywhere. It is not stopped by a wall; it finds a gap."

And the particle thumma: as recorded at 044/13-14, it conveys a delayed sequence. The pouring, then, does not come immediately after the dragging — there is an interval.

I record this as an observation about word order: the first two verbs were joined with fāʾ (without interval), the third with thumma (with an interval). The scene begins fast, then stops.

That the place of the pouring is specified as the head is worth recording.

The head is both the highest and the most protected place of the body. The most protected organ of the human body is there; and a man's act of setting himself high is also described by way of the head — "to hold one's head up", "to be at the head".

I give this as my own reading, and it is connected with the nineteenth verse: the sūra had said lā taʿlū (do not rise). In the forty-eighth what is poured is poured exactly upon the place that was set high.

It is I who make this link; the wording of the two verses is verifiable.

And a detail of word order is the finest point in the verse.

The expected expression would have been "min ḥamīmin" (of scalding water). The expression that comes carries a genitive: min ʿadhābi'l-ḥamīm — "of the punishment of scalding water".

A word, that is, comes between the substance and the head: ʿadhāb.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the structure of the phrase: what is poured is named not as water but as the punishment of water. An abstract noun takes the place of a concrete substance.

And it has an effect: the sentence takes the event out of being a physical description and makes it the carrying out of a sentence. What is poured is not a substance but a requital.