سَبْعَةُ

1748

Commentary:

As regards the seven gates of Hell, as stated in the present verse, it may be remembered that in Arabic the number seven, as also the number seventy, is often used to express not a specific numeral but the idea either of perfection or completeness or of profusion. In this sense the verse would signify that Hell will have the number of gates corresponding to the number and variety of offences committed by the sinful. The number "seven" may also refer to the seven exteroceptive senses viz. the senses of vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch, pain and temperature, granted to man for receiving impressions from the outer world.

The words جزء مقسوم (a portion allotted to it) signify that each of the inmates of Hell will enter it by the door corresponding to his offence. With regard to Heaven also it is reported in a saying of the Holy Prophet that each of its inmates will enter it by a door corresponding to his specific good deeds (Bukhari, ch. on Fada’il-e-Ashabun-Nabi).

The word جزء (a portion) does not mean, as is clear from this verse, part of one’s body. It only means a section or party of sinners as distinct from others. This explains the meaning of this word in 2:261 where it signifies one bird as distinct from others and not different parts of one bird.

Incidentally, it may be mentioned here that elsewhere the Quran mentions the number of guards placed over Hell as nineteen (74:31). The reason for this might lie in the fact that man has been endowed with nine major senses i.e. the seven exteroceptive senses mentioned above, one proprioceptive sense of position in space and one enteroceptive sense arising from internal organs relating to sensations of hunger, thirst, etc. These, coupled with their nine spiritual counterparts together with the guardian or the controlling sense i.e. the will-power which dominates and controls all these different faculties of human nature, are nineteen in number and hence the nineteen guardians of Hell. This specific mention of the number of the guardian angels of Hell as nineteen forcefully draws attention to the fact that man becomes deserving of Hell on account of his having abused his God-given faculties.

3051

Commentary:

Overawed by the vastness of the size of an object of nature or the extraordinary powers of a human being, men of low intellect and weak faith are prone to ascribe Divine attributes to them. It is the untenability of this position that the verse under comment seeks to expose. It purports to say that disbelievers are overawed into attributing Divine powers to a big object of nature, or a great man, while the great universe of which God is the sole Architect is an inexhaustible storehouse of unfathomable mysteries, infinitely larger in number than the wonderful things that meet the eye. So it is absurd on the part of disbelievers to take an object of nature or a human being as God on the score of his or its being seemingly extraordinary.

It may also be noted that numbers "7" and "70" are used in Arabic to denote a very large number, and not exactly "seven" and "seventy" as ordinary numerals.