Surah Ibrahim (Abraham ) 14 : 14

Overview  (Verses 14 - 17)

Prayers for God’s Support

We must realize here that the Supreme Power does not intervene to settle the issue between the messengers and their communities until the messengers themselves declare their final split with their people. The believers must make it clear that they will never return to their people’s old ways after God has saved them. They must also insist on having their own separate identity, society and leadership. This means that the community is split into two which differ in faith, lifestyle, leadership and structure. This is when God intervenes to destroy the despots who persecute the believers. This is when God fulfils His promise to His messengers to grant them victory and establish the believers on earth. Such intervention will never happen while the believers are integrated in un-Islamic society, working from within its institutions. They must first have their own identity and their own separate structure and leadership.

“Their Lord revealed this to His messengers: Most certainly shall We destroy the wrongdoers.” (Verse 13) Here we have an emphatic statement. Furthermore, it adds power through its use of inversion and the plural pronoun in reference to God. It asserts a promise to destroy the tyrants who threaten the believers and, by their threats, do wrong to themselves, the truth, God’s messengers and all people. “And most certainly shall We cause you to dwell in the land long after they are gone.” (Verse 14) This is not an act of favouritism, but the work of a fair law of nature that God has set in operation.

“This [I promise] to all who stand in awe of My presence, and stand in awe of My warnings.” (Verse 14) This settlement in the land after the tyrants have gone is promised to those who fear God and do not act with arrogance or overbearing pride. Such people fear what God has warned them against, so they take measures to avoid it. They do not engage in corruption or wrongdoing against other people. Hence they deserve to be given their chance and be established on earth.

This sets the scene for a confrontation between the feeble power of wrongdoing despots and the great power of God, the Supreme Being who controls the whole universe. The messengers’ task has been completed with the clear delivery of the message and the declaration of a split between themselves and the unbelievers. The tyrants marshal all their feeble power and stand to one side, and the messengers, who in all humility call people to faith, stand opposite, but they are supported by God, the Almighty. Both parties pray for victory, and the result is as expected: “And they prayed for God’s help and victory [for the truth]. And every powerful, obstinate enemy of the truth shall come to grief. Behind him stretches hell where he shall be made to drink putrefied water, gulping it little by little, and yet hardly able to swallow it. Death will beset him from every side, yet he shall not die. More severe suffering still awaits him.” (Verses 15-17)

This is a remarkable scene showing every hardened despot ending up in failure in this life on earth. As he takes his position of miserable failure, hell is looming large behind him. There he is made to drink putrefied fluids. He is violently forced to gulp it down, although he can hardly take a sip because it is both dirty and bitter. His disgust is evident from the look on his face, so much so that we can almost see it through the words. Death approaches him from every corner, but he will not die, because he must take his punishment in full. But beyond this is an even sterner punishment.

It is indeed a remarkable scene showing the tyrant coming to grief, engulfed by a fate that appears to him in this horrific way. The words used here add their own connotations which make the punishment fit the brute force the tyrants themselves employed to threaten the advocates of the truth.