Tafsir of Al-Haqqah 69:34

"Nor does he urge the feeding of the indigent."

This means he does not encourage the bestowing of the food that the indigent is entitled to from the wealth of the affluent. In this interpretation, there is an implied genitive addition (mudaf), because urging (al-hath) can only be directed toward an action, and "food" (al-ta’am) is not an action.

Alternatively, "food" may be understood in the sense of "feeding" (al-it’am), substituting the noun in place of the infinitive, similar to "giving" (al-‘ata’) meaning "to give" (al-i’ta’). In this case, it means: he does not urge the feeding of the indigent, let alone bestowing his own wealth; thus, there is no omitted genitive addition.

It has been said that the mention of "urging" serves to indicate that one who fails to urge [others] is already at this low rank, so how much more so the one who fails to perform the act itself? How beautiful are the words of Zaynab al-Tathariya, mourning her brother Yazid:

When guests descend, he is a nuisance To the living, until his cooking pots are ready.

She implies his urging them toward hospitality, his haste in preparing it, and his persistence in it, which contains various aspects of praise.

Abu al-Darda—may Allah the Exalted be pleased with him—used to urge his wife to increase the broth for the sake of the indigent. He would say, "We have cast off half of the chain through faith; shall we not cast off the other half?" He derived this from the verse, as it makes the deserving of the chain conditional upon the lack of faith and the failure to urge [others].

The specification of these two matters is mentioned because the ugliest of beliefs is disbelief (kufr), and the most heinous of vices are stinginess and hardness of heart. The verse contains evidence that the disbelievers are addressed by the branches of the law (furu’) just as they are by the fundamentals (usul); otherwise, they would not be punished for failing to urge the feeding of the indigent.