al-Ḥāqqa 69:30-32

Khudhūhu fa-ghullūh · Thumma'l-jaḥīma ṣallūh · Thumma fī silsilatin dharʿuhā sabʿūna dhirāʿan fa'slukūh "Seize him and shackle him! Then roast him in the blazing fire! Then thread him into a chain whose length is seventy cubits!"

Three verses, three plural imperatives: khudhūhu, ghullūh, ṣallūh, uslukūh — four verbs counting the fourth.

And the one addressed is not named. To whom is the command given? The verse does not say.

This is the settled form of such scenes in the Qurʾān: "Seize him and drag him into the midst of the blaze!" (al-Dukhān 44/47). There too the one addressed is nameless.

The non-naming of the addressee depersonalises the scene. The command is given not to a person but to a working order.

خُذُوا۟ — Root: أ-خ-ذ. The same root occurred in the tenth verse: fa-akhadhahum akhdhatan rābiya — "He seized them with a mounting seizure."

The sūra uses the root twice: once for the peoples that were destroyed (10), once for this man (30). What was done to whole peoples is done to a single man.

غُلُّوهُ — Root: غ-ل-ل. Ghull — the iron ring put on the neck or the hand, a collar, a fetter. Its plural is aghlāl.

Its occurrences in the Qurʾān:

• "Those are they with fetters on their necks." (al-Raʿd 13/5)
• "We have put fetters on their necks, reaching to their chins." (Yā-Sīn 36/8)
• "He removes from them their heavy burdens and the fetters that were upon them." (al-Aʿrāf 7/157) — here in a negative sense, as the thing removed.

An interesting branch of the same root: غُلُول (ghulūl) — to filch goods secretly from the spoils. "Whoever defrauds will come on the Day of Resurrection with what he took" (Āl ʿImrān 3/161).

The link the lexicographers make: ghulūl is the slipping of something in secretly — and a ring, too, is slipped onto the neck. The shared core is slipping in, threading through. I transmit this explanation; I do not present it as a settled etymological judgement.

The particle fāʾ joins the two commands: khudhūhu fa-ghullūh — "seize him, [and immediately] shackle him." Fāʾ conveys connection without interval. There is no gap between the seizing and the shackling.

ثُمَّ — unlike fāʾ, this puts an interval between. There is a gap, that is, between the shackling and the casting into the fire. The sūra repeats it at the second and third commands too: thumma… thumma…

The sequence itself is meaningful: seize → shackle → (pause) → cast into the fire → (pause) → thread into the chain. The pauses show that the operation is not being hurried.

ٱلْجَحِيمَ has been brought forward. The normal order would be ṣallūhu'l-jaḥīma (verb, then object). Here the object has come before the verb.

In Arabic this conveys specification and concern: "into no other place, but into the blazing fire." The same grammatical phenomenon was recorded for ʿala'l-ghaybi in the section on al-Takwīr.

ٱلْجَحِيم — Root: ج-ح-م. It was treated in the section on al-Takāthur 102/6: jaḥmatu'n-nār — the fierce blazing of fire, the flaring of embers. What was recorded there: among the names of the Fire, jaḥīm brings forward the fierceness of the flame. I do not repeat it.

صَلُّوهُ — Root: ص-ل-ي. It was treated in the section on al-Inshiqāq 84/12: to enter the fire, to be scorched in it, and especially to be laid against the fire; iṣlāʾ — to put a thing into the fire. I do not repeat it.

But I need to enter a note here, because in this commentary the next sūra is al-Maʿārij, and there ٱلْمُصَلِّين (those who pray) will occur.

ص-ل-ي (to enter the fire) and ص-ل-و (prayer) are separate roots. This distinction was recorded plainly in the section on al-Aʿlā 87/12 and 87/15, and this note was entered there: "it is not the same root; no meaning was drawn from the resemblance of sound."

I enter the same note here. Between ṣallūh (cast him into the fire) in al-Ḥāqqa and muṣallīn (those who pray) in al-Maʿārij there is no shared root, and I draw no meaning from this closeness of sound. I content myself with recording that two similar sounds occur in two neighbouring sūras.

سِلْسِلَة — Root: س-ل-س-ل. A chain. The word is again on a doubled pattern (sil-sil), just like ṣarṣar in the sixth verse.

And here the pattern carries the sense: a chain is made of links fitted into one another; the word itself is made of syllables fitted into one another. From the same root come سَلْسَبِيل (in the Qurʾān for a spring of the garden, al-Insān 76/18) and سَلِس (flowing, easily running); the shared idea is coming in succession, following one another.

There are two doubled words in the sūra: ṣarṣar (6) and silsila (32). Both are words that repeat their own sound, and both are instruments of punishment.

ذَرْع and ذِرَاع — Root: ذ-ر-ع. Dhirāʿ is the length from the elbow to the fingertip: a cubit. The length of a man's arm, turned into a unit of measure. Dharʿ is the act of measuring, or the length measured.

The unit of measure, that is, is the human body. The length of the chain is counted by a man's arm.

This is the only exact measure the sūra gives.

Up to now the sūra has not given: the number of the peoples, the height of ʿĀd, the names of the cities, the kind of the angels. In the eighth verse it asked "how many were left" and gave no answer. In the seventeenth it gave a number (eight) but did not say what was numbered.

Now it gives an exact measure: seventy cubits.

On the number. In Arabic seventy (and seven, and seven hundred) mostly conveys an indefinite multitude; it is not an exact count but means "very many". The Qurʾān itself uses this plainly in one place:

"Even if you ask forgiveness for them seventy times, God will not forgive them." (al-Tawba 9/80)

The seventy there is not a limit; the following verse shows as much. The number, that is, is an expression of multitude.

Some classical exegetes read the seventy here in the same way; others count it a real measure. I do not impose a preference.

A note per the method (Method): I draw no reckoning from this number. Claims of the number-and-letter-reckoning kind are not used in this commentary.

But that a measure has been given is worth recording, and it suggests the following — which I record as my own reading:

Two verses earlier the man had spoken of two things: his wealth and his authority. No measure was given for either. How much wealth he had, how wide his authority was — the sūra does not say.

The only thing whose measure is given is the chain.

The only object in the scene that can be counted, that is, is not the things the man possessed; it is the thing that holds him.

Root: س-ل-ك. And the choice of this verb completes the image.

Salaka — to enter upon a road, to travel a road (sulūk, maslak — a road); and to pass a thing through something: to thread a thread through a needle, to force a body through a narrow gap.

Its occurrences in the Qurʾān show both branches:

• "…that He causes it to flow as springs in the earth…" (al-Zumar 39/21) — passing water through.
• "Thus do We make it enter the hearts of the guilty." (al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/200) — to pass into.
• "He will drive him into a mounting punishment." (al-Jinn 72/17)
• The uses of sulūk in the sense of "whichever road they take…".

The sense here is from the second branch: to pass through the chain.

And the image is this: the chain is described not as a bond but as a channel. The man is not tied to the chain; he is passed through it — as a thread is passed through a needle.

I record this as an observation about the language. The verb's sense of "passing through" is recorded in the lexicons; the comparison with a needle is among the concrete examples the lexicographers give.

And there is a contrast. The same root also carries the sense sulūk (to take a road, to walk in a way) — a movement a person makes by his own choice. Here the verb has turned into a passive operation: the man does not take a road, he is passed through.

I record this as my own reading; the two senses of the root are recorded in the lexicon, the contrast I draw between them is mine.