Qāf 50:30

Yawma naqūlu li-jahannama hali'mtalaʾti wa taqūlu hal min mazīd

"On that day We shall say to Hell: are you full? And it will say: is there any more?"

This is the most striking scene of the sūra, and its force lies less in what it describes than in how it describes it.

Two clauses. A question, and a question. And one of the two parties is Hell.

In Arabic rhetoric this is called tashkhīṣ (giving personality to what is inanimate) and it is used in several places in the Qurʾān: the weeping of heaven and earth (al-Dukhān 44/29), the heavens and the earth saying "we come willingly" (Fuṣṣilat 41/11), the speaking of the skins (Fuṣṣilat 41/21).

Here what is personified is Hell. And the only property given to it is appetite.

Now let us look at exactly what the personification does here, because the matter is not an ornament of style.

One. It removes number. The verse does not say "Hell is very wide"; it gives no measure, no figure, no volume. Instead it shows something that is never sated. Had a measure been given, the mind would have grasped and bounded it. Insatiability cannot be grasped.

Two. It turns the scene into a dialogue. The verdict is not narrated; it is spoken. And the other party to the speech is the place of the punishment. The punishment, that is, ceases to be a passive place and becomes a party.

Three. It turns the question round. The one who asks is God: "are you full?" The expected answer is "I am full" or "I am not". What comes instead is a question. No answer is given; a want is stated.

Four. And just here the word builds a bridge to the other half of the sūra. I shall come back to this five verses later.

I present these four points as my own analysis.

And here there is a real disagreement about the sense; it must not be concealed.

هَلْ is an interrogative particle in Arabic, but in Arabic interrogative particles do not always ask a real question; sometimes they convey denial or rejection (istifhām inkārī).

Both readings are transmitted in the classical commentaries and both lie within the bounds the language allows.

I can record an observation, not as a preference: the second reading answers the question directly ("are you full?" — "I am full"). The first gives no answer but states a demand, and this explains better why the question was asked.

Moreover the Qurʾān uses this expression in another place: "I shall surely fill Hell with jinn and men together" (Hūd 11/119; a similar expression at al-Sajda 32/13). These verses say that the filling will take place; but they do not settle at which moment the question in Qāf is asked.

I do not impose a preference. And this must be stated: the link that will be built with the thirty-fifth verse is sharper on the first reading and weaker on the second, but it holds either way — because what makes the link is the word itself, not its sense.

To be full. Malaʾa — he filled; malʾān — full; malaʾ — the leading men of a people (those who fill an assembly).

The verb is in the iftiʿāl form and in the feminine of the second person: imtalaʾti — "are you full (O Hell)". The word jahannam is treated as feminine in Arabic.

And the iftiʿāl form adds something here: that the filling has taken place of itself and is complete.

To increase, to grow more. Ziyāda — an increase; mazīd — increase, more, a greater amount.

The word may be a mīm-verbal noun or a passive participle: "increasing" or "what is increased". Both analyses come out at the same place: more.

This pattern occurs twice in the sūra, and both times as the last words of a verse:

The two questions are each other's opposite: one wants to take in more, the other looks for a way out.

I record this as an observation; both patterns stand in the text and both are in the position of the verse-ending.