مِّمَّا خَطِيئَاتِهِمْ أُغْرِقُوا فَأُدْخِلُوا نَارًا فَلَمْ يَجِدُوا لَهُم مِّن دُونِ اللَّهِ أَنصَارًا
"Because of their errors they were drowned, then they were put into a fire, and they found for themselves no helpers against God."
From the beginning of the sūra it was Noah who was speaking. Here, for a single verse, the voice changes: it is the narrator who delivers the verdict.
This is the sūra's most important structural choice. Noah made a prayer in verse 24; he will make two more in verses 26-28. In between, the sentence stating that the prayer was granted does not come from Noah's mouth.
The messenger asks; the verdict belongs to another. The sūra says this not by content but by a change of narrator.
The explanation the classical grammarians give: this mā is redundant — that is, it adds no separate sense to the sentence, it has come for emphasis. There are other examples in Arabic of a mā coming between min and its governed noun to convey reinforcement.
The min here is causal: "because of, by reason of". So the sentence means "because of their errors", and the intervening mā stresses this causal link: from nothing else, from exactly this.
| Word | The root's image | Its emphasis |
|---|---|---|
| khaṭīʾa | Missing the target | Going to the wrong target |
| dhanb | Dhanab — a tail | The consequence that follows behind; the trace attached to it |
| ithm | To weigh down, to hold back | What loads, what makes heavy |
| jurm | To cut off, to sever | The act that breaks the bond |
The distinguishing side of khaṭīʾa is that there is no intent at the origin of the word — the one who misses was trying to hit the target. But the Qurʾān uses this word for deliberate sin as well, and the lexicographers record that khaṭīʾa in time acquired the sense of "deliberate sin" too. The use here, given the sūra as a whole, is not an unintended slip.
That the word comes in the plural is meaningful: not a single crime but an accumulation spread over centuries.
Variant readings are transmitted for the pronunciation of the word (such as khaṭīʾātihim / khaṭāyāhum). These differences do not change the sense; both are plural. I do not give the names of particular imāms of the readings, because I am not certain of them.
The non-naming of the agent is a widespread choice in the Qurʾān's accounts of punishment. One reason for it is that the punishment is kept closed to any personalising: who delivers the penalty is not made a matter of discussion, only that it has been delivered is stated.
And now note the sūra's proportion. This single word is the whole of the event of the flood, to which the Qurʾān elsewhere devotes dozens of verses. Sūrat al-Qamar narrates the flood in seven verses (54/9-16); Sūrat Hūd sets up a scene from the building of the ark to its coming to rest on land. In this sūra all of it is one verb.
The sūra is concerned not with the event but with the process. The outcome is merely entered in the record.
And the Qurʾān narrates the same event from the other side too. In Sūrat al-Ḥāqqa the flood is given from the front of those who were carried, not of those who were drowned: "When the water overflowed, We carried you in the running vessel" (al-Ḥāqqa 69/11). There the verb is active and its subject is evident (ḥamalnākum — We carried); here the verb is passive and its subject is not stated (ughriqū).
Two records of the same event, in two different voices: the rescue is openly owned, the destruction is left in the passive. I record this as an observation.
This is the most striking expression in the verse: from the water straight into the fire. Two opposite substances are set one after the other and no waiting in between is described.
In the classical commentaries this expression has been used as evidence in the discussion of the punishment of the grave / the barzakh: that there is a punishment between the drowning and the resurrection is drawn from the verse's fāʾ. This is an inference widely treated in the classical literature of theology and exegesis.
The contrary view says that the fāʾ here conveys not temporal closeness but sequence and certainty: "in the end they were put into a fire" — how much time passed in between is not stated.
Another verse on the subject is counted as support for the first reading: of the house of Pharaoh, "They are presented to the fire morning and evening; and on the day the Hour comes it is said: put the house of Pharaoh into the severest punishment" (al-Ghāfir 40/46). Here it is clear that a punishment before the resurrection is spoken of.
I make no definite preference; neither reading runs against the text, and this is a matter falling within the field of theology.
نَارًا comes indefinite — not "al-nār" (that fire) but "a fire". This is one of the elements that feeds the dispute over whether the verse speaks of hell or of some other punishment.
Root ن-ص-ر: to help — in particular to help one in difficulty, coming from outside. From the same root come naṣr (victory), nāṣir (helper), anṣār.
Now look back: in verse 21 it was said that the people followed the man whose wealth and children were many. Wealth and children are a human being's most concrete sources of "help" — one buys, the other stands behind you. Verse 25 states that those sources did not work.
That is, the sūra closes this: what is relied on is not there at the moment it is relied on. This is a recurring verdict of the Qurʾān ("His wealth and what he earned did not avail him", al-Masad 111/2; "His wealth will not avail him when he falls", al-Layl 92/11).