قُتِلَ أَصْحَٰبُ ٱلْأُخْدُودِ
The verb is to all appearance a passive perfect: "he was killed". But in Arabic the form قُتِلَ is an established expression of imprecation: "perish", "damn him".
The explanation of the lexicographers: to say "let him be killed" of something is the harshest form of imprecation in Arabic, because being killed is the last thing that comes; to wish it on a person is to leave nothing else to be wished on him.
This community is the community that kills people. They lit the fire, they dug the trenches. When the Qurʾān issues its verdict about them, the word it uses is the very act they performed: qutila — "let them be killed".
The verdict, that is, is given in the language of the crime. This is a method the Qurʾān uses often, and it will be seen again in this commentary in the later verses of al-Burūj: the tenth verse will say ʿadhāb al-ḥarīq (the punishment of the burning) — because they burned.
Root: ص-ح-ب. This word was treated in the section on Sūrat al-Fīl. The finding there was this: the root means "to accompany something, not to part from it"; ṣāḥib is a companion on the road; ṣuḥba is being together. And when the Qurʾān names communities with this form, it ties the naming to the one thing that defines that community.
In al-Fīl this finding was put to work as follows: an army is mentioned not by its imperial connection but by an animal; what they trusted in became their name.
Here the same method yields a still harsher result. This community may have founded a state, marched an army, adopted a religion. In the Qurʾān's record their name is a pit.
And note: the root of the word ṣāḥib is "not to part from". Those, that is, who did not leave the trench. The sixth verse will say exactly this: "they were sitting at the edge of it."
- خَدّ (khadd) — the cheek. The flat and slightly hollowed side of the face. The Qurʾān: "Do not turn your cheek away from people" (Luqmān 31/18) — it describes turning the face away in arrogance.
- خُدَّة / أُخْدُود — a long pit opened in the ground, a trench, a channel.
- تَخْدِيد — to cleave and open a channel.
The word is on the وزن أُفْعُول pattern (ufʿūl), and this pattern in Arabic conveys magnification. Not an ordinary pit, then, but a large and long trench.
The relation between these two usages of the root is striking as a detail inside the language itself.
Khadd is the softest and most open place on a human face; the place that is caressed, that is kissed, down which tears run. And the same root names the pit into which people were thrown to be burned.
The shared core is formal: both are a lengthwise, slightly hollowed surface. But the standing of the two usages side by side gives the word a strange weight.
I record this as an observation about the language; I do not claim that the verse intends this resonance.
There is a small but noteworthy dispute: does the expression aṣḥāb al-ukhdūd describe the wrongdoers, or the believers thrown into the trench?
| View | Explanation |
|---|---|
| The wrongdoers | Since qutila is an imprecation, the side imprecated is the wrongdoers. Besides, the pronoun "they" in verses 6-7 refers back to the wrongdoers |
| The believers | If qutila is read as a statement, it becomes "the companions of the trench were killed"; that is, those thrown into the trench |
The majority hold the first view, and the flow of verses 6-7 supports it: the subject of the sentence "they were sitting at the edge of it" can only be the wrongdoers.
The second view has a side to it as well, however: the word ṣāḥib is used in Arabic also for "the person who comes to be in a thing" (aṣḥāb al-nār — those who enter the fire). For that reason the expression is broad enough to take in everyone connected with the pit.
I prefer the first view; my ground is the settled standing of the qutila form as an imprecation. It is not binding.