Surah Al-A'raf 7:80
ﲤ ﲥ ﲦ ﲧ ﲨ ﲩ ﲪ ﲫ ﲬ ﲭ ﲮ ﲯ ﲰ
And [We had sent] Lot when he said to his people, "Do you commit such immorality as no one has preceded you with from among the worlds?
Tafsir of Al-A'raf 7:80
Tafsir
Al-Kashshaf
Verse range: 7:80
Al-Aʿrāf: 80 **"And [We sent] Lot, when he said..."**
- "And Lot": Meaning, "And We sent Lot."
- "When" (idh): This is an adverbial modifier for "We sent." It is as if to say: "Remember Lot," and "when" is a substitute for it, meaning: "Remember the time when..."
- "He said to his people, 'Do you commit the immorality...'": Do you perform the evil deed that is extreme in its ugliness?
- "...that no one has preceded you with": No one has committed it before you. The bāʾ (in bihā) is for transitivity, as in the expression "I preceded him with the ball" (sabaqtuhu bi-l-kura), meaning I struck it before him. From this is the Prophet’s saying: "Ukāsha has preceded you to it."
- "...from among the worlds": The first "from" (min) is redundant, used to emphasize the negation and to convey the meaning of totality. The second is for partitive specification.
- If you ask: What is the position of this sentence?
- I say: It is an initiating sentence. He first denounced them by saying, "Do you commit the immorality?" then he rebuked them for it by saying, "You are the first to commit it." Alternatively, it is a response to an implied question, as if they had asked, "Why should we not commit it?" So he said, "No one has preceded you with it, so do not do what you have not been preceded in."
- "Indeed, you approach men": This is an explanation of his statement, "Do you commit the immorality?" The interrogative hamza is like the one in "Do you commit," used for denunciation and to show the gravity of the act. It is also read as innakum (Indeed, you...), as an initiating statement of fact.
- "...with desire": This is a mafʿūl lahu (causative object), meaning: "for the sake of satisfying desire." There is no motivation for them other than pure desire, without any other impetus. There is no greater condemnation than this, for it describes them as having the nature of beasts, possessing absolutely no rational motivation, such as the desire for offspring or the like. It can also be a state (ḥāl), meaning: "desiring, following desire, and paying no heed to the obscenity."
- "Rather, you are a transgressing people": He turns away from the denunciation to inform them of the state that necessitates the commission of evils and invites the following of desires: that they are a people whose habit is excess and overstepping boundaries in everything. Thus, they transgressed in the satisfaction of desire, exceeding the customary to the uncustomary. Similar to this is: "Rather, you are a transgressing people" (Ash-Shuʿarāʾ: 166).
Al-Aʿrāf: 82 **"And the answer of his people was only that they said..."**
- Meaning: They did not answer him with anything that constitutes a response to what Lot (peace be upon him) spoke to them regarding the denunciation of the immorality, the gravity of the matter, and labeling them with the mark of transgression—which is the root of all evil. Instead, they brought up something else unrelated to his speech and advice: the command to expel him and those who believed with him from their town, out of annoyance with them and with the preaching and advice they heard.
- "Indeed, they are people who keep themselves pure": This is mockery of them and their purity from immoralities, and a boast of the filth they were in. It is like what the profligate scoundrels say to some righteous people when they preach to them: "Remove this ascetic from us, and relieve us of this pious one."
- "And his family": And those who are associated with him from his kin or the believers.
- "Among those who remained behind": Those who remained in their dwellings, meaning they stayed and were destroyed. The masculine plural is used to give precedence to the masculine over the feminine. His wife was a disbeliever, loyal to the people of Sodom. It is reported that she turned back, a stone struck her, and she died.
- Notes on the destruction: It is said the Muʾtafika (the overturned cities) were five cities. It is said they were four thousand [people] between the Levant and Medina, and God rained sulfur and fire upon them. It is said the residents were swallowed by the earth, while stones were rained upon those who were traveling or were stragglers. It is said they were rained upon, then swallowed by the earth. It is reported that a merchant from among them was in the Sacred Precinct (Haram), and the stone waited for him for forty days until he finished his trade and left the Haram, then it fell upon him.
- On the verb "to rain" (maṭara vs. amṭara): If you ask: What is the difference between maṭara and amṭara? I say: It is said maṭarat-hum al-samāʾ (the sky rained on them) and wād mamṭūr (a rained-upon valley). In Nawābigh al-Kalim: "A valley not rained upon." The meaning of maṭarat-hum is that the rain reached them, like saying ghāthat-hum (it succored them), wabalat-hum (it poured on them), jādat-hum (it drenched them), and rahamat-hum (it showered them). It is said amṭara ʿalayhim kadhā (He rained such-and-such upon them), meaning He sent it down upon them like rain. [Examples]: "Rain down upon us stones from the sky" (Al-Anfāl: 32), and "We rained upon them stones of baked clay" (Hūd: 82). The meaning of "And We rained upon them a rain" is: "We sent down upon them a strange type of rain," meaning stones. Do you not see His saying: "And evil was the rain of those who were warned" (Al-Aʿrāf: 84)?