Allah سبحانه و تعالى says in the Qur’an:
وَلَئِنْ مَسَّتْهُمْ نَفْحَةٌ مِنْ عَذَابِ رَبِّكَ لَيَقُولُنَّ يَا وَيْلَنَا إِنَّا كُنَّا ظَالِمِينَ (٤٦)
Usually, the aayaah above is translated as follows:
And, if a breath (minor calamity) of the torment of Your Lord touches them, they will surely cry: ‘Woe unto us! indeed we have been Zalimun (polytheist and wrong-doers, etc.).
But the translation above totally misses the beauty of the aayah – as my teacher says: a miracle cannot be translated. However, the translation does capture the gist of the meaning of the aayah i.e. even a little bit of punishment were to afflict us, we would cry in pain. However, it doesn’t capture the ‘how’ i.e. how little of a punishment, how loud of a cry etc. Let us examine the aayah word by word:
Point 1:
The aayah starts off with a verb in the Arabic language which makes it a verb sentence (as opposed to a nominal sentence – a sentence that starts with a noun). A verb sentence is considered a weaker sentence when compared with a nominal sentence because verb is stuck in time (i.e. temporal, transient etc.). whereas noun is not. So, point 1 makes the starting a weaker starting.
Point 2:
The aayah presents a hypothetical by starting off with ‘in’. A factual statement is stronger than a hypothetical and thus makes the context further weak.
Point 3:
Not only does it begin with an ‘in’, it actually says ‘la-in’ which means ‘even if’. Thus it makes the hypothetical even less likely to occur and therefore the context even weaker.
Point 4:
The word used for touch is mass. Arabs had a lot of words for touch and the word that indicates the least amount of touch is mass. For instance, darb means a different kind of touch - a rather forceful touch. So the word choice of mass further weakens what is about to be talked about. Subhanallah.
Point 5:
Not only is the word mass used, but it is also used in the past tense. Subhanallah, that further weakens it because past tense in Arabic indicates singularity of occurence i.e. touched but only once (and the touch was a mass).
Point 6:
A noun is used to explain the touch further using a very picturesque description. In fact, I suspect the next time we open the door or window and feel the cool breeze on our face, we will have a different reaction.
The word used is نَفْحَةٌ and it means cool breeze (as opposed to warm breeze). What is easier for us to bear? Of course, the cool breeze. In fact, one may argue that such a breeze is in fact soothing. Subhanallah, that gives the impression that the touch is in fact
Point 7:
The word used for punishment is عَذَابِ رَبِّكَ. This is so amazing. May Allah swt protect us from that day. Allah chose to say ‘Punishment of Your Lord’ as opposed to ‘Punishment of the Fire’ or ‘Punishment of Jaheem‘. By doing so, the punishment is weakened. Here is how:
By attributing the punishment to رَبِّ Allah is making the punishment the weakest because رَبِّ has positive connotation. Not only that, He سبحانه و تعالى says رَبِّك which is referring to Your Lord (while addressing the Prophet sallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam). This further weakens the punishment because the Prophet sallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam had been chosen, elevated and Allah’s mercy was with him, sallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam. This makes the punishment further weak.
Point 8:
Allah chooses the word مِن instead of ‘of.’ This is essentially saying: ‘from the punishment’ rather than ‘of the punishment.’ Use of ‘from’ further weaks the punishment because it alludes to distance. The use of ‘of the punishment’ would have been stronger. So this further weakens the punishment.
Conclusion: Scholars mentioned that the way this aayah has been phrased by our Lord, the act of punishment described is of the weakest form. As we see above, the literary beauty of Quran speaks for itself as everything in the description comes together to weaken the punishment more and more. Look at the perfect choice of letters and on top of that this is the spoken word of Allah سبحانه و تعالى. Now, I ask you: give me one example from either written or spoken form that can match this perfection. Impossible indeed!
Subhan Allah.
In sha’ Allah, the next post will discuss the second part of this aayah which will make us realize the true extent of the punishment. May Allah سبحانه و تعالى protect us from that day and from even the weakest form of his punishment. Ameen.
