al-Muzzammil 73:12-13

Inna ladaynā ankālan wa jaḥīmā / Wa ṭaʿāman dhā ghuṣṣatin wa ʿadhāban alīmā "Surely with Us there are fetters and a blazing fire; and a food that sticks in the throat, and a painful punishment."

The recompense of the reckoning handed over in the preceding verse is enumerated here. Four things, in two verses.

Root: ن-ك-ل. Its singular is نِكْل (nikl): a heavy iron ring put on the ankle or the neck, a fetter, a shackle.

And the family of derivatives shows what the word does:

• نَكَل عَنْ (nakala ʿan) — he held back, he shrank, he took fright and gave up.
• نَكَال (nakāl) — a punishment given to serve as a warning. In the Qurʾān: "We made it a warning punishment (nakālan) for those before it and those after it" (al-Baqara 2/66); "…as a warning punishment from God" (al-Māʾida 5/38); "So God seized him with the punishment of the hereafter and of the first life (nakāla'l-ākhirati wa'l-ūlā)" (al-Nāziʿāt 79/25).
• تَنْكِيل (tankīl) — deterring, making an example of. The Turkish tenkil ("suppression by making an example") comes from this root.

At the centre of the root there is one idea: prevention. The fetter prevents the body; the warning punishment prevents others. The word names a "stopping" that is at once physical and social.

And the point of word order here: the verse uses the plural and indefinite (ankālan). No number is stated, no definiteness is given. That the indefinite in Arabic can convey magnification was treated in the sections al-Ikhlāṣ and al-ʿAṣr; that reading is possible here too.

Root: ج-ح-م. Its concrete sense: the flaring up of fire, the intensifying of heat. Jaḥmatu'l-nār — the fiercest part of a fire, its hottest place.

The word is settled in the Qurʾān as one of the names of hell.

The most concrete and most uncomfortable image in the sūra.

Root: غ-ص-ص. غُصَّة (ghuṣṣa): a morsel that catches in the throat and cannot be swallowed. And from here the figurative sense: a distress that settles inside and does not pass.

Ghaṣṣa bi'l-māʾ — he choked on water, that is, it stuck as he was drinking.

English has exact equivalents: "to stick in one's throat", "it will not go down". And the Turkish gussa ("grief") has come over from this same root.

The image of punishment the verse chooses is worth pausing over, because it is unusual.

What is widespread in descriptions of hell is burning: fire, flame, boiling water. That is here too (jaḥīm).

But something entirely different comes in between: a food that cannot be eaten.

And the property of this image is this: it does not cause pain, it does not complete itself. A burning fire does a work; a morsel stuck in the throat does nothing — it neither goes down nor comes up. It stays suspended.

The Qurʾān sets up this kind of "non-completion" in other places too:

• "He tries to gulp it down but can hardly swallow it" (Ibrāhīm 14/17).
• "No sentence of death is passed on them that they might die, nor is their punishment lightened for them" (Fāṭir 35/36).

The common structure: a being-caught-in-between that does not end.

I record this as my own reading: the verse describes the punishment not only as an intensity but also as a staying suspended.

The four elements come in this sequence:

The first three advance from the outside inward. First movement is bound, then the skin, then the throat. The fourth is a kind of collecting heading: a punishment left unnamed, qualified only as "causing pain".

This reading of the sequence is my inference; the text claims no such order.

In the eleventh verse the reckoning was handed over. In the twelfth and thirteenth verses it is shown what the reckoning that was handed over is.

And this explains why the sentence "leave Me alone with them" is a consolation. The work taken from the addressee does not go into a void; it is stated that there is a recompense for it.

The word order supports this too: إِنَّ لَدَيْنَا — "surely with Us". The particle ladā conveys nearness and being present. That is, the recompense is not something to be produced later; it stands ready.