al-Infiṭār 82:13-14

Inna'l-abrāra la-fī naʿīm • wa inna'l-fujjāra la-fī jaḥīm "The good are in bliss; those who break their bounds are in the blazing fire."

The two sentences are word for word in the same mould:

Of four elements two are the same and two are opposite. And the two opposed words are on the same pattern as well: naʿīm and jaḥīm — the فَعِيل pattern, the same sound, the same number of syllables.

This complete symmetry is the reverse of the structure treated in Sūrat al-Qāriʿa. There, in the recounting of two groups, the symmetry was deliberately broken (al-Qāriʿa 101/6-9); here it is not broken at all. The difference is meaningful: in al-Qāriʿa there was a balance — something measured — and the outcome of the measuring was recounted in different forms. Here it is not a measure but two attributes that are compared, and the attributes are exact opposites of one another.

Root: ب-ر-ر. This root was treated at al-Baqara 2/44, and what was recorded there is the key here: the basic sense of the root is breadth. From the same root barr — the dry land, that is, the wide expanse over against the sea. Birr too is this breadth: goodness, in the logic of the word itself, is the opposite of narrowness.

Abrār is the plural of بَرّ or بَارّ: "one who is good, who has made goodness his habit."

The conclusion that follows from the concrete sense of the word is this: the abrār are "the wide ones". Goodness is named here not as a list of behaviours but as a width of space. As was recorded in the section on al-Baqara: miserliness narrows, goodness widens.

The root's other usages show this breadth:

• بِرّ الوالدين — goodness to one's parents. It is usually rendered "kindness to parents" in English; what the word carries is the widening of the space given to them.
• حَجّ مَبْرُور — an accepted, a "good" pilgrimage.
• الْبَرّ — one of the names of God (al-Ṭūr 52/28: "Truly He is the doer of good, the compassionate.").

And in one place the Qurʾān defines birr openly; this definition was given in the section on al-Baqara (al-Baqara 2/177): not to turn your face east or west, but faith + giving of property though you love it + prayer + almsgiving + keeping your word + patience in hardship.

So the abrār, by the Qurʾān's own definition, are those whose belief has turned into behaviour. This is directly connected with the ninth verse of the sūra: there, those who deny the reckoning were named; here, their opposite, those who reflect the reckoning in their behaviour.

The word generally occurs in this context in the Qurʾān: "The good drink from a cup mixed with camphor." (al-Insān 76/5), "Truly the book of the good is in ʿIlliyyūn." (al-Muṭaffifīn 83/18). In the next sūra the same word will occur twice at an interval of four verses.

Root: ف-ج-ر. It was treated in the section on al-Shams: a fājir is the one who splits the covering over him and comes out, who pierces the bound that holds him; fujūr is not a lack but an overflow.

Fujjār is the plural of فَاجِر.

And here the tightest word-link of the sūra is completed: in the third verse the seas are fujjirat — split open, their dykes broken. In the fourteenth verse men are fujjār — those who break their dykes.

The same root, in the same sūra, one for the universe and one for man.

What this link says is the following, and I write it as my own reading: the sūra names what will happen at the end with the same word as what happens in this world. The sea's breaking its dyke is a catastrophe; man's breaking his own dyke is a choice. And the two are named with the same verb.

One more layer: on that day the seas will overflow, because the order that holds them will be removed. But man overflows today, and moreover while the order that holds him is still standing.

The verses divide people in two: abrār and fujjār. They leave no category in between.

This is a structure the Qurʾān often uses in its scenes of the hereafter, and it has come before us several times in earlier sections: in al-Qāriʿa those whose balance is heavy and those whose balance is light; in al-Balad the companions of the right and of the left; in al-Shams the one who purifies and the one who buries.

A boundary must be drawn about what these twofold divisions mean.

The division is set up not to divide people into two boxes but to describe two directions. The words themselves show this: abrār and fujjār are adjectival plurals, not nouns — they convey not an identity but an attribute. Whoever carries that attribute is included in it.

And the Qurʾān itself says in other places that there are degrees in between: "They are of degrees with God." (Āl ʿImrān 3/163); and further, in the next sūra a difference of rank will be set up between the abrār and the muqarrabūn (al-Muṭaffifīn 83/21, 28).

So the twofold division here is not a classification that counts and divides people; it is the naming of two directions. One that widens, one that overflows.

نَعِيم — root ن-ع-م. The concrete sense of the root is softness: nāʿima — soft. From this niʿma (that which gives a person softness and ease), naʿīm (the abundance and continuity of favour), anʿām (soft-treading cattle).

That softness stands at the centre of the word is striking: favour is the removal of hardness. The state of life's not striking against a man.

جَحِيم — root ج-ح-م. Jaḥmatu'l-nār — the burning embers of the fire, the flame at its most intense. Jaḥama — the fire grew fierce.

The word is one of the names of the fire of hell. As was recorded in the section on al-Humaza, the Qurʾān uses several names for hell (jahannam, nār, jaḥīm, saqar, laẓā, saʿīr, hāwiya, ḥuṭama) and each name brings one aspect of the fire to the front. Jaḥīm brings to the front the fierceness of the heat.

The opposition of the two words works at the level of their roots as well: one softness, the other fierce heat. One the softening of contact, the other contact become unbearable.

In both verses the particle of place is فِى, and the emphatic lām has come before it.

In the section on al-ʿAṣr the function of this particle was dwelt on: it does not say "man has suffered loss", it says "man is in loss." Loss is given not as an event but as an environment.

The same holds here: the abrār do not attain to bliss, they are in bliss; the fujjār are not thrown into the fire, they are in the fire. Both are described not as entering a place but as being in a place.

And both verses are nominal sentences — there is no verb. In Arabic a nominal sentence conveys fixity. So what is recounted is not an event but a state.

In the next verse a verb will come (yaṣlawnahā — they enter it and burn) and then movement will begin. But the two verses themselves are motionless; two statements of a state.