al-Nabaʾ 78:21-23

Inna jahannama kānat mirṣādā · Li'l-ṭāghīna maʾābā · Lābithīna fīhā aḥqābā "Hell is a place of watch — a place of return for the transgressors. They will remain in it for ages."

Root: ر-ص-د. رَصَدَ — he watched, he waited, he lay in ambush. رَاصِد — a watchman. رَصَد — a watching company.

The uses in the Qurʾān fix the sense of the root:

"Sit for them at every place of watch (كُلَّ مَرْصَدٍ)." (al-Tawba 9/5)

"Whoever now seeks to listen finds a flame watching for him." (al-Jinn 72/9 — raṣadā)

"He sends watchers before him and behind him." (al-Jinn 72/27 — raṣadā)

The word is again on the mifʿāl pattern — like the mīqāt of the seventeenth verse, and like the mīzān of al-Qāriʿa. The pattern forms nouns of instrument or of place: a place of watch, the point where an ambush is laid.

Here the exegetes divide in two:

Both views fit the sense of the word and in practice they converge.

The picture the word chooses is worth noting. Hell is not named "a place of punishment" or "a place of penalty". It is named a place that waits.

And a thing that waits knows what is coming. An ambush is not laid by chance; it is laid on a road that is known to be travelled.

I record this as my own reading: what the word conveys is Hell's having been prepared — just as the tableau of verses six to sixteen conveyed the earth's having been prepared. Two preparations, in one sūra, for two different places.

Root: ط-غ-ي. This root was treated in detail in the section on Sūrat al-ʿAlaq and what was recorded there is not repeated here.

In summary the finding there was: the concrete sense of the root is water overflowing its bed; transgression is a being's crossing of its own limit; and being a transgressor is not to possess something bad but to carry something good past its limit.

What is to be added here is this: the verse does not say "for the unbelievers", it says "for the transgressors". This is the counterpart in the text of the principle recorded in Method: what the verses describe are attributes.

And the next sūra will use this attribute twice more:

• al-Nāziʿāt 79/17: "Go to Pharaoh; he has transgressed."
• al-Nāziʿāt 79/37: "As for him who transgressed and preferred the life of this world…"

Al-Nāziʿāt, that is, will first show the attribute in a person (Pharaoh) and then generalise the attribute. Al-Nabaʾ speaks directly with the attribute. Two sūras use the same word from two different directions.

Root: أ-و-ب. To return, to come back. آبَ — he returned. أَوَّاب — one who returns often, one who repents. In the Qurʾān it is used of David (Dāwūd): "He was one who turned back often (awwāb)" (Ṣād 38/17; also 38/19, 44).

مَـَٔاب is a noun of place: the place to which one returns.

And this word is the sūra's most striking repetition. The word occurs twice in the sūra and points to two different addresses:

The same word, two destinations.

This is another form of the expression "his mother is the Abyss" treated in the section on al-Qāriʿa. What was recorded there was this: the person is not thrown somewhere; he arrives where he belongs.

Al-Nabaʾ sets up the same idea more plainly: everyone has a maʾāb; the question is which maʾāb. And the thirty-ninth verse will say that the maʾāb can be chosen: "let him who wills take one."

That the word means "return" is meaningful in itself. The place arrived at is not a new place; it is a place returned to. This accords with what the Qurʾān says about where the human being comes from: "We belong to God and to Him we are returning" (al-Baqara 2/156).

Root: ح-ق-ب. حُقْب / حُقُب — a long span of time. Its plural is أَحْقَاب.

On the length of the span the lexicographers differ: eighty years, seventy years, an indefinitely long period. None of these figures is certain and the transmissions behind them are weak; for that reason I give no number.

The word's other occurrence in the Qurʾān: "Or I shall go on for ages (حُقُبًا)" (al-Kahf 18/60 — the words of Moses (Mūsā)). There too the sense is "a long time" and it gives no particular figure.

لَابِثِينَ — Root: ل-ب-ث. To remain, to stay somewhere, to linger.

This root will come back in the last verse of the next sūra:

"On the day they see it, it will be as though they had remained no more than an evening or its forenoon." (al-Nāziʿāt 79/46)

Two neighbouring sūras use the same root in exactly opposite directions:

This is one of the most concrete verbal links between the two sūras and it is a verifiable datum. What the link sets up is this: the ratio between the time spent in this world and the time to be spent there is inverted.

A lifetime looks long while it is being lived; looked at from there it is half a day. A punishment looks abstract when looked at from a distance; there it is ages.

This verse is one of the most debated verses in the history of theology, because the word أَحْقَابًا conveys a term; and what has a term has an end.

The views:

The datum on the other side: the Qurʾān uses plain expressions elsewhere for the unbelievers:

"For them is the fire of Hell; they abide in it for ever." (al-Jinn 72/23)

"…except the road of Hell, in which they abide for ever." (al-Nisāʾ 4/169)

The word here is أَبَدًا and it means "for ever".

In this commentary no side is taken in this dispute, and the ground for that is recorded in Method: this is a matter of theology, and each of the parties rests on different verses of the Qurʾān. Moreover this is not a matter this sūra can settle — the sūra states a term; it does not establish a ruling.

What can be recorded is this: the verse states the length of the term; it does not state its end or its endlessness. The conclusions loaded onto the word come from outside the word.