Ibrāhīm 14:18

Mathalu'lladhīna kafarū bi-rabbihim aʿmāluhum ka-ramādin ishtaddat bihi'r-rīḥu fī yawmin ʿāṣif · Lā yaqdirūna mimmā kasabū ʿalā shayʾ · Dhālika huwa'ḍ-ḍalālu'l-baʿīd

"The likeness of those who deny their Lord is this: their deeds are as ashes which the wind scatters violently on a stormy day. Of what they have earned they have power over nothing. That is the very thing that is the far straying."

The choice of word must be recorded, and it carries the whole weight of the likeness.

Ashes are what is left of something burnt. That is, the likeness is not saying that the deeds never existed; it is saying that something once was there, and that what remains of it is a residue light enough to be blown away.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the word itself: the verse does not say "dust" or "nothing". It says ashes — and ashes are the proof of a burning. Labour was spent; what remains is not the labour itself.

The same idea has been treated three times in the series with different words:

In all three places the scattering agent is the same: the wind. This is an overlap between sūras that can be verified.

And there is a difference between the likeness in al-Kahf and the one here, and I give it as my own reading: in al-Kahf what is scattered was the life of this world; here what is scattered is the deeds themselves. That is, the one recounts the end of what is transient, the other the end of the labour spent on what is transient.

The verb is built in a curious way: ishtaddat bihi'r-rīḥ — word for word, "the wind grew violent with it."

The expected pattern would have been "the wind scattered it." Instead of this, the verse folds the ashes into the violence of the wind itself.

I record this as an observation about the word order: the sentence takes the ashes out of being an object and makes them part of the wind's movement. That is, the scattering is pictured not as an event coming from outside but as the ashes' having become indistinguishable from the wind.

فِى يَوْمٍ عَاصِفٍ — and the adjective is given to the day: "a stormy day." In Arabic this is the transfer of an adjective from its real owner (the wind) to the time; the lexicographers call it majāz ʿaqlī. It is not the wind but the day that is called "stormy".

And the block closes with the last construct of the third verse: ulāʾika fī ḍalālin baʿīd (3) → dhālika huwa'ḍ-ḍalālu'l-baʿīd (18).

The difference must be recorded: in the third verse the construct was indefinite, here it is definite and huwa has come in between. In Arabic the pronoun huwa coming in like this conveys restriction (ḥaṣr): "this is the far straying itself."

That is, the sūra turns an attribute into a definition fifteen verses later.