al-Wāqiʿa 56:51-56

Thumma innakum ayyuha'l-ḍāllūna'l-mukadhdhibūn · La-ākilūna min shajarin min zaqqūm · Fa-māliʾūna minha'l-buṭūn · Fa-shāribūna ʿalayhi mina'l-ḥamīm · Fa-shāribūna shurba'l-hīm · Hādhā nuzuluhum yawma'd-dīn

"Then you, O you who have gone astray, you who deny! You will surely eat of a tree of zaqqūm, and fill your bellies with it, and drink boiling water on top of it — drinking as thirst-stricken camels drink. This is the welcome prepared for them on the Day of Judgement."

From the forty-first verse the men of the left have been recounted in the third person: aṣḥābu'sh-shimāl, innahum kānū, wa kānū. In the fifty-first verse this is broken all at once: innakum — "you".

In Arabic this transition is called iltifāt (a shift in the direction of address).

And note: in the fifty-sixth verse the address returns to the third person (nuzuluhum — "their welcome"). The second-person address lasts only five verses, that is, exactly across the scene of eating and drinking.

I record this as my own reading: the narration turns to the one addressed at the point where it becomes most concrete. The classification is done in the third person, the scene is made to be lived through in the second. Then it draws back again, and the seal is again struck from outside.

Two attributes: ḍāllūn (those who go astray) and mukadhdhibūn (those who deny).

This pair will return in the ninety-second verse of the sūra — but with its order reversed:

This is a verifiable repetition within the sūra, and the change of order cannot be counted a coincidence.

As my own reading I give this: in the fifty-first verse the address is made to them, and the order is the order they lived — first one strays from the road, then one denies (the chain mutraf → persistence → speech in verses forty-five to forty-seven set up the same order). In the ninety-second verse, by contrast, a verdict is being given, and in a verdict the act is named first: having denied. The one is the order of occurrence, the other the order of judgement.

In the section on the structure of the sūra I recorded that at the end the third group loses its name of place and is named by verbal attributes. This is the place where that transformation first shows: in the fifty-first verse the group is no longer called aṣḥābu'sh-shimāl, it is called by two verbal attributes.

There is an oddity in the word order and the lexicographers record it: min shajarin min zaqqūm — two mins one upon the other, and both nouns indefinite.

The expected expression would be mina'sh-shajari'l-zaqqūm (from the zaqqūm tree). Its coming indefinite is explained by the lexicographers thus: a tree of unknown kind, unrecognised. The word does not introduce, that is; it estranges.

Comparison with the table of the men of the right makes this clear:

The word occurs in three places in the Qurʾān: al-Ṣāffāt 37/62, al-Dukhān 44/43 and here.

The lexicographers differ over its root and the disagreement must not be concealed:

I issue no settled etymological judgement. This much can be read from the verse itself: the tree is described not as something wanted for eating but as something with which the belly is filled.

The root م-ل-ء: to fill. Malaʾa — he filled. Malʾān — full.

The choice of word carries the whole scene here. The verse does not say "they will be satisfied", it says "they will fill their bellies".

The difference is plain and worth recording: to be satisfied is a matter of satiety, to fill is a matter of volume. In the table of the men of the right, when food was spoken of, choice was stressed — fākihatin mimmā yatakhayyarūn (fruit of what they approve), laḥmi ṭayrin mimmā yashtahūn (the flesh of birds of what they desire). There there is will: they choose, they have appetite. Here there is no will: they fill.

I give this as my own reading, and its ground is the verbs of the two tables: the one eats with appetite, the other under compulsion.

Four verses are joined one after another by fāʾ: la-ākilūn → fa-māliʾūn → fa-shāribūn → fa-shāribūn.

Fāʾ in Arabic conveys succession without interval (fāʾ al-taʿqīb). The scene flows in four steps without a pause, that is: eating → filling → drinking → drinking like an animal.

In the table of the men of the right there is no such chain; there the objects are ranged with wāw (wa fākihatin, wa laḥmi ṭayrin, wa ḥūrun ʿīn) — they stand side by side, that is, and do not chase one another.

This is a measurable difference separating the rhythm of the two tables.

ʿAlayhi — "on top of it". Like drinking water after a meal, that is. A familiar gesture at table, at a table turned upside down.

The word occurs in the Qurʾān only here.

The sense the lexicographers give: hīm is the plural of ahyam/haymāʾ and means a camel afflicted with a disease that leaves it unable to slake its thirst. Huyām is described as a condition seen in camels which makes the animal drink constantly and whose thirst is not relieved by drinking.

A second branch of the root is recorded too: haymān — to wander about bewildered and without direction. The lexicographers join the two under the shared idea of "not being able to hold oneself in". I relay this link as the lexicographers make it, not as a firm judgement.

A note of distinction: there is a separate disagreement over the root of the word al-muhaymin that occurs in Sūrat al-Ḥashr, and it has been discussed in al-Ḥashr; that question should not be confused with this one.

The work of the comparison: shurba'l-hīm — "to drink as the hīm drink". No measure, number or duration is given, that is; a state is given: a thirst that does not pass however much is drunk.

And that the comparison is chosen with the hearer in view should be recorded: the camel is the animal that community knows best, and its relation to water is at the centre of their lives. That the animal most enduring of thirst should not be slaked — for someone living in the desert this image is the extreme case.

A link within the sūra: in the eighteenth verse it was said of the sābiqūn bi-akwābin wa abārīqa wa kaʾsin min maʿīn (goblets, ewers, a cup from a flowing spring). There the water flows and is drunk from a cup; here the water boils and is drunk like an animal. The two tables take the same verb (to drink) and put it into two separate scenes.

This verse closes the first block of the sūra (see the section on the structure of the sūra).

Nuzul — root ن-ز-ل. The description of the word is worth recording: the lexicographers explain nuzul as the first hospitality brought out to a guest on his arrival. Not the banquet itself, that is, but what is offered while receiving him at the door.

This definition turns the verse at once into something else, and I recorded this earlier in this file (in the section on verse 24): the same word will return in the ninety-third verse — fa-nuzulun min ḥamīm.

The sharpness in the choice of word is this: punishment is described with a word of hospitality. And to say "the first hospitality" implies that more will follow.

I give this as my own reading, and its ground is the lexical sense of the word: nuzul conveys not an end but a reception.

Yawma'd-dīn — the Day of Judgement. The branches of the root د-ي-ن ("debt / recompense / submission") were analysed in the section on al-Fātiḥa (māliki yawmi'd-dīn); I do not repeat them.

And the first block closes by tying itself to where it began: the sūra opened with idhā waqaʿati'l-wāqiʿa — with the coming to pass of an event. The fifty-sixth verse gives that event's day a name: yawma'd-dīn. The scene recounted across fifty-six verses is at last set in its place in the calendar.