أُو۟لَٰٓئِكَ هُمُ ٱلْوَٰرِثُونَ · ٱلَّذِينَ يَرِثُونَ ٱلْفِرْدَوْسَ هُمْ فِيهَا خَٰلِدُونَ
The word order must be recorded: the conditional clause that has run for nine verses is gathered up in the tenth by a demonstrative pronoun. Ulāʾika — "those are the ones". And it is reinforced by the pronoun of separation (hum): in Arabic this pronoun, coming between subject and predicate, reports specification.
The sentence, that is, is closer to "the ones who are heirs are precisely these" than to "they are heirs".
The sense of the root: the passing of a property or a standing from its owner to another. Wārith — the one who takes what passes; mīrāth — the thing that passes.
One. An inheritance is not something earned by working for it — it passes from another. Two. But being an heir depends on a qualification — kinship, entitlement, standing.
I give this as my own reading, its ground being this double character of the word: after nine verses of enumerated acts, the outcome is given not with a word for earning but with a word for transfer. The outcome, that is, is named not as the price of the acts enumerated but as something that passes to those who carry them.
The same root was treated at al-Dukhān 44/28 (wa awrathnāhā qawman ākharīn) and in al-Shuʿarāʾ — there the inheritance was what a destroyed people left behind. The same word, in two different directions.
The word occurs in two places in the Qurʾān: here, and al-Kahf 18/107 (jannāti'l-firdaws).
| View | Explanation |
|---|---|
| 1 | It is Arabic — firdaws, a garden enclosed about, with trees and vines |
| 2 | It is a foreign word taken into Arabic — of Persian/Syriac origin, "a garden surrounded by a wall" |
Both views are transmitted; I do not impose a preference. The point at which the two views meet is worth recording: at the core of the word lies the idea of an enclosed, protected garden.
And the pronoun must be recorded: hum fīhā khālidūn — a feminine singular pronoun. Firdaws is counted masculine; the lexicographers record that the pronoun refers back to the word janna (at al-Kahf 18/107 the construction is jannāti'l-firdaws).
And a structural entry: the list closes with a place. This overlaps with the closing of the ʿibādu'l-raḥmān list treated in al-Furqān — there too the list closed with a place: ulāʾika yujzawna'l-ghurfata bimā ṣabarū (25/75). Two lists, in two separate sūras, both ending with the name of a dwelling. This is an overlap that can be verified from the two texts.