يَصْلَوْنَهَا يَوْمَ ٱلدِّينِ • وَمَا هُمْ عَنْهَا بِغَآئِبِينَ
Yaṣlawnahā yawma'l-dīn • wa mā hum ʿanhā bi-ghāʾibīn "They enter it and burn on the day of reckoning; and they will not be absent from it."
The fourteenth verse had stated a state: the fujjār are in the fire. The fifteenth verse puts a time to that state: the day of reckoning. The sixteenth puts a duration to it: they will not be parted from it.
So the three verses give three separate pieces of information: where (14), when (15), how long (16).
And the sixteenth verse has one further function: it takes the fourteenth out of metaphor. The expression "they are in the fire" could have been read as the description of a state; the sixteenth verse gives it certainty and continuity.
Root: ص-ل-ي. Its concrete sense: to enter the fire, to be roasted in the fire, to remain inside the flame.
Ṣalā'l-shāt — he roasted the sheep in the fire. Iṣlāʾ — to cast into the fire. Ṣalan — the hot place of the fire.
A caution is needed here: this root must not be confused with ص-ل-و, the root of the word for the ritual prayer. The two roots part at the final letter (yāʾ / wāw), and in Arabic a root is determined by the identity of its three consonants — the same caution was given for falaq and falāḥ in the section on al-Falaq. There is no derivational link between ṣalāt (the prayer) and iṣlāʾ (to cast into the fire).
The verb is in the imperfect: continuity and renewal. And the pronoun attached to the verb, هَا — "it" — returns to the jaḥīm of the preceding verse.
The construct occurs here for the first time in the sūra in its full form. In the ninth verse there was only al-dīn; here it becomes yawma'l-dīn, and it will be repeated twice more in verses 17 and 18. So the expression occurs three times in the sūra and stands at the centre of the last four verses.
The analysis of the word was carried out in the section on al-Māʿūn: the root د ي ن, the idea at its centre return; dayn (a debt), dāna lahu (he submitted), dānahu (he called him to account), dīn (a way, a system). In all of them the same skeleton: something given and its coming back.
The best-known place of the construct in the Qurʾān is in al-Fātiḥa: مَالِكِ يَوْمِ ٱلدِّينِ — "the master of the day of reckoning". In the section on al-Fātiḥa this verse and the mālik / malik difference of variant reading were treated.
This link bears directly on the last verse of the sūra and will come up again at verse 19: al-Fātiḥa says that He is the mālik of that day; al-Infiṭār 82/19 says that on that day no soul is mālik over anything. The same root, to two different subjects.
Ghayb — what is unseen, what falls outside the range of the senses. Ghība — speaking behind someone's back; the word itself means "while the person is not there". Ghāʾib — one not present.
And the concrete origin of the word rests on an image: الغَابَة (ghāba) — a dense forest; whoever enters it becomes invisible. From the same root ghayāba — the bottom of the well in the story of Joseph: "Cast him into the bottom of the well." (Yūsuf 12/10, 15). A depth that is not seen.
The sentence is negative and a nominal sentence: wa mā hum ʿanhā bi-ghāʾibīn. Moreover a redundant بِ has been added to the predicate — a usage in Arabic that strengthens the negation. So not "they do not disappear" but "they will never disappear."
| Reading | Sense | Consequence |
|---|---|---|
| They are not absent from the fire | They are not taken out of it, not removed, given no interval | The conveying of continuity; the punishment's being uninterrupted |
| The fire is not absent from them | The fire does not leave their sight | The dimension of seeing and consciousness: not merely burning but continually seeing |
The wording suits the first reading better, because the subject is hum (they), and it is they who are absent. This is a preference; it is not binding.
The first reading has support within the Qurʾān: "They neither die there nor live." (al-Aʿlā 87/13); "They are not to come out of it." (expressions like al-Baqara 2/167; also al-Māʾida 5/37: "They will wish to come out of the fire, but they are not to come out of it.").
The ninth verse of the sūra had said: you deny the reckoning. To deny the reckoning is by definition a refusal concerning what is unseen. What is denied is a day that has not yet come and is not seen. The Qurʾān names this domain: al-ghayb. And it sets it as the first item of the description of faith: "those who believe in the unseen" (al-Baqara 2/3 — treated in the section on al-Baqara).
That is, for the man who refuses what is unseen, nothing is left that will remain unseen. The recompense for denying the ghayb turns out to be the total disappearance of the ghayb.
I present this link as an observation resting on unity of root; I do not ascribe it to any classical exegete. That the root is the same in both places is a fact standing in the text.
And the next sūra will complete this idea from the reverse side: "They are on that day veiled from their Lord." (al-Muṭaffifīn 83/15). Those who here are not absent from the fire will there be veiled from their Lord. This link between the two sūras will be treated in the section on al-Muṭaffifīn.