وَإِذَا ٱلْجَحِيمُ سُعِّرَتْ وَإِذَا ٱلْجَنَّةُ أُزْلِفَتْ
Wa idhā'l-jaḥīmu suʿʿirat Wa idhā'l-jannatu uzlifat "When the Fire is set blazing, and when the Garden is brought near."
Root: ج-ح-م. Jaḥmatu'n-nār — fire at its fiercest heat, the violence of the flame. Jāḥim — fire grown hot, fire that dazzles the eye.
The Qurʾān uses several names for hell, and each name brings one aspect forward: jahannam, nār (fire), saʿīr (blaze), saqar, ḥuṭama (treated in the section on al-Humaza), laẓā, hāwiya (treated in the section on al-Qāriʿa), jaḥīm. Jaḥīm is the name that brings the heat forward.
Root: س-ع-ر. Saʿara'n-nāra — he kindled the fire, set it blazing. سَعِير — a blazing fire; one of the names of hell.
The root has an interesting relative: سِعْر — price. In Arabic the rising of prices is expressed with the same word as the flaring up of a fire (ishtaʿalati'l-asʿār). The lexicographers tie the connection to the idea of "rising, growing hot". I record this as an observation about a family of words; I attach no ruling about the verse to it.
The pattern: the passive of Form II, with the doubled consonant. Repetition and violence: it was set blazing and set blazing again.
Root: ز-ل-ف. To draw near, to be near. Zulfa — nearness, rank. Zulfā — nearness: "And indeed he has a nearness with Us" (Ṣād 38/25).
And from this root مُزْدَلِفَة — the place-name among the rites of the pilgrimage; the place of drawing near.
The pattern: the passive of Form IV — "was brought near". The Garden, that is, does not draw near of itself; it is brought near.
| The Fire | The Garden | |
|---|---|---|
| Verb | suʿʿirat — set blazing | uzlifat — brought near |
| Where the operation falls | On itself — it is being made ready | On its position — it is being moved |
| Who moves | Man goes to it | It comes to man |
The Qurʾān keeps this difference elsewhere too: "And the Garden is brought near to the godfearing" (al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/90; Qāf 50/31 — wa uzlifati'l-jannatu li'l-muttaqīn). The same verb in both places, and in both places it is said to whom it is brought near.
In al-Takwīr, by contrast, it is not said to whom it is brought near. Neither for whom the Fire is set blazing, nor to whom the Garden is brought near. The rule the sūra has applied from the beginning holds here as well: in no clause is either the subject or the addressee named.
Root: ج-ن-ن. This root was treated in the section on al-Baqara 2/25; I do not repeat it here. In summary: the sense of the root is to cover, to conceal, and all its derivatives turn about invisibility — janīn (covered in the womb), jinn (the unseen), majnūn (whose mind is covered over), mijann (a shield), janna (the garden whose trees cover the ground).
And the fine point here is this: the whole movement of the sūra was the lifting of coverings — the sky was stripped away, the pages were spread open, the light of the sun was rolled up. And the last item of this series of openings is the thing whose very name amounts to "the hidden one": al-janna.
The lifting of the coverings, then, is completed by the most hidden thing of all becoming visible. It was recorded in the section on al-Baqara: "What is promised is, by definition, what cannot be seen now." The thirteenth verse is the moment at which that unseeable thing becomes visible.
I record this as my own reading; it is not visible without the analysis of the root made in al-Baqara.