ٱلَّذِى يَصْلَى ٱلنَّارَ ٱلْكُبْرَىٰ
- صَلَى ٱللَّحْمَ — he cooked the meat on the fire, he roasted it.
- صِلَاء (ṣilāʾ) — the heat of a fire, its glow.
- ٱصْطَلَى — he warmed himself at a fire. In the Qurʾān: "Perhaps I may bring you a brand from it, so that you may warm yourselves" (al-Naml 27/7).
The last item matters: the same root also describes drawing near to a fire in order to get warm. Beneath the root, that is, there is no idea of punishment; there is the idea of contact with fire. The result of the contact depends on the degree of the fire and on the duration of the contact.
This shows that the word the Qurʾān uses in its descriptions of punishment is a neutral verb. What makes the verse heavy is not the verb itself but its object: al-nāra'l-kubrā.
In the fifteenth verse of this sūra the verb فَصَلَّىٰ (he prayed) will come. In writing the two words look very much alike: يَصْلَى and صَلَّىٰ.
But these are not the same root. Yaṣlā (to enter the fire) is from the root ص-ل-ي; ṣallā (to pray) is, by general acceptance, from the root ص-ل-و. The last letter differs, and in Arabic the root is determined by the identity of the three consonants.
In the section on Sūrat al-Falaq the same warning was given about the resemblance between ف-ل-ق and ف-ل-ح. The principle recorded there holds here too: closenesses of meaning in roots that share their first two letters have been discussed in the tradition of the language, but they cannot be presented as a claim of unity of root.
That these two verbs occur three verses apart within one sūra leaves an echo in the ear. I record this as an observation about the sound; I do not present it as evidence for meaning and I make no claim of a play on words.
Pattern: kubrā is the feminine of akbar; an elative on the fuʿlā measure. Since nār is feminine in Arabic, the attribute has come in the feminine as well.
| Explanation | What it says |
|---|---|
| With the fire of this world | The known fire is given as a measure; what is meant is that which cannot be compared with it |
| With the degrees of the Fire | The heaviest layer of the punishment |
| The pattern states no comparison | As with al-ashqā, the measure simply states the quality: "that great fire" |
The first explanation is the most reasonable in point of context, and there is a reason for it: the addressee knows fire. The way to describe a thing that cannot be described is to place it relative to something known. The point established in the section on Sūrat al-Qāriʿa holds here too: "A thing whose nature cannot be known can only be described by comparison."
There is a verse-ending ground as well: al-kubrā fits the -ā sound of the sūra. Had al-nāra'l-ʿaẓīma been said, the sound would have been spoilt.