نارُ اللَّهِ الموقَدَةُ

[It is] the fire of Allah, set ablaze.

EXEGESIS

Mūqadah is passive participle from the root verb waqada. If associated with fire, it literally means ignited, kindled, blazed, lit, or started burning.^{‎[1]https://www.almaany.com/quran/104/6/3/.} Waqūd is the fuel used to light fire, as mentioned in 2:24: … the fire whose fuel (waqūd) will be humans and stones, prepared for the faithless.

INSIGHTS FROM HADITH

1. At some point during the political leadership of Imam Ali (a), his brother ʿAqīl had experienced financial trouble and repeatedly insisted to the Imam to favour him and give him more than what was normally given to others from the public treasury. Imam Ali (a) would refuse, but when he kept insisting, the Imam tried to make him understand. He reports: ‘ʿAqīl came to me several times and repeated his request. I heard him, and he thought I would sell my faith for him, and follow his tread leaving my own way. [When he continued asking] I heated a piece of iron and drew it near his body so that he might take a lesson from it. He cried in pain as a person in protracted illness cries and was about to get burnt with its branding. Then I said to him: “Moaning women may moan over you, O ʿAqīl! Do you cry on account of this piece of iron heated by a mortal out of entertainment, while you are driving me towards the fire which the wrath of God, the powerful, has prepared? Should you cry from pain, but I should not cry from the flames?”’^{‎[2]Nahj, sermon 223.}

REVIEW OF TAFSĪR LITERATURE

The word ḥuṭamah is used to describe the fire of hell, and indicates that it is composed of a heavy fire, which has the capacity of crushing. Attributing the fire to God creates the understanding that it is more severe and greater in its effects than regular fire.^{‎[3]Mudarrisi, vol. 18.}

The fire of God blazes continuously and infinitely. Initially, stones are the fuel for it before people are thrown into it, and when the wrongdoers end up in the deepest place of it, they become its fuel.^{‎[4]Maydānī, Maʿārij al-Tafakkur wa Daqāʾiq al-Tadabbur, 15/538.}

This fire can be the reflection of the four metaphorical fires of this world that urge people to misconduct: the fire of lust, which burns all the acts of obedience; the fire of misfortune, which burns the faith in monotheism; the fire of severing ties with loved ones, which burn the hearts; and finally, the fire of love for the world, which burns all the fires and is the worst of all,^{‎[5]Tustari, 1/205.} for the obsessive love of something blinds a human being. This surah gives us an example of someone who has an obsessive love of wealth, which is a fire that can become ḥuṭamah in the hereafter. 

INSIGHTS FROM OTHER TRADITIONS

The concept of sinners suffering after their death is found in the world’s five major religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. However, between these religions it varies in its form from being suffering inflicted on the soul only, or the soul and the body, or being in a worldly body, or a body of the hereafter, or other bodily forms.

With regards to Zoroastrians, some of whom consider heaven and hell a myth, Zoroastrian texts – which predate the era of canonisation of the Bible – provide interesting comparisons with Quranic views of the hereafter. Zoroastrian philosophy of the hereafter mentions a bridge that could be wide for the righteous and narrower than the edge of a sword for evildoers, which everyone must pass after death. When evildoers pass over it, they fall off into the abyss towards the House of Lies.^{‎[6]Cavendish, Richard; Ling, Trevor Oswald (1980), Mythology: an Illustrated Encyclopaedia, Rizzoli, pp. 40-45.} This could be similar to what many Muslims call the realm of barzakh, which is the realm between death and the Day of Judgement. In Zoroastrianism, souls are punished temporarily in the House of Lies until the eternal damnation and hell, which contains foul smells, evil food, and smothering darkness. Eventually, everyone will walk through a river of molten metal in which the righteous will not burn, and the impure will be completely purified,^{‎[7]Cavendish, Richard; Ling, Trevor Oswald (1980), Mythology: an Illustrated Encyclopaedia, Rizzoli, pp. 40-45.} and are lifted to the House of Songs, which could be compared to paradise in the Islamic understanding. Those who have an equal amount of good and bad deeds rest in a neutral place and wait to be raised towards the House of Songs or await the final judgment and the mercy of Ahura Mazda.^{‎[8]http://www.avesta.org/mp/dd.htm.}

The Myth of Er^{‎[9]Gill, The Myth of Er From the Republic of Plato, https://www.thoughtco.com/the-myth-of-er-120332.} from the Republic of Plato suggests that Er saw in his vision tyrants and great criminals were tortured and punished, and whenever they would try to ascend and leave that place, wild men of fiery faces stopped them. They seized the criminals and carried them off, and after binding head, foot, and hand, they threw them down and flayed them with scourges, and dragged them, carding them on thorns like wool, and letting everyone they pass know about their crimes, and that they were going to be cast into hell.^{‎[10]Gill, The Myth of Er From the Republic of Plato, https://www.thoughtco.com/the-myth-of-er-120332.}  

Examining the biblical texts regarding hell, four terms emerge relating to the punishment of the sinners: Hades, Sheol, Tartarus, and Gehenna. Most of the translators and biblical scholars have translated these words as hell, fire, hellfire, and the everlasting abode of the sinners in the hereafter. However, some Christian scholars deny the eternal hellfire and hence they interpret those terms differently. Those who interpret these terms as the eternal hellfire, their interpretations can be compared easily with some verses of the Quran. More comparative material can be found in non-canonical biblical scriptures, such as some of the verses of the Book of Enoch, or Prophet Idrīs (a) as the Muslims call him, which is considered canonical to Ethiopian Orthodox Christians. 

Some similarities can be observed between some of the verses of Sūrat al-Humazah with some of the verses of the Book of Enoch: ‘And from thence I went to another place, which was still more horrible than the former, and I saw a horrible thing: a great fire there which burnt and blazed, and the place was cleft as far as the abyss, being full of great descending columns of fire: neither its extent nor magnitude could I see, nor could I conjecture. Then I said: “How fearful is the place and how terrible to look upon!” Then Uriel, one of the holy angels who was with me, answered me: “Enoch, why hast thou such fear and affright?” I answered: “Because of this fearful place, and because of the spectacle of the pain.”’^{‎[11]https://www.ccel.org/c/charles/otpseudepig/enoch/ENOCH_1.HTM.}

 

 

[1] https://www.almaany.com/quran/104/6/3/.
[2] Nahj, sermon 223.
[3] Mudarrisi, vol. 18.
[4] Maydānī, Maʿārij al-Tafakkur wa Daqāʾiq al-Tadabbur, 15/538.
[5] Tustari, 1/205.
[6] Cavendish, Richard; Ling, Trevor Oswald (1980), Mythology: an Illustrated Encyclopaedia, Rizzoli, pp. 40-45.
[7] Cavendish, Richard; Ling, Trevor Oswald (1980), Mythology: an Illustrated Encyclopaedia, Rizzoli, pp. 40-45.
[8] http://www.avesta.org/mp/dd.htm.
[9] Gill, The Myth of Er From the Republic of Plato, https://www.thoughtco.com/the-myth-of-er-120332.
[10] Gill, The Myth of Er From the Republic of Plato, https://www.thoughtco.com/the-myth-of-er-120332.
[11] https://www.ccel.org/c/charles/otpseudepig/enoch/ENOCH_1.HTM.