and will flee. Jesus (peace be upon him) will say, ‘I have a blow in store for you, and you will not escape me.’ He will catch him at the eastern gate of Ludd and kill him. Allah will then rout the Jews. No created thing behind which a Jew hides will remain without Allah causing it to speak—neither stone, tree, wall, nor animal—with the sole exception of the gharqad tree, for it is one of their trees and does not speak.” (1)
Thus, the hadith explicitly states that inanimate objects will speak.
Moreover, the exception made for the gharqad tree among inanimate objects—because it does not disclose the Jews, being one of their trees—shows that this speech is literal. If the speech of inanimate objects were intended figuratively, this exception would be meaningless.
If we were to interpret the speech of inanimate objects figuratively, there would be nothing extraordinary about the battle against the Jews at the end of time. Their defeat by the Muslims would be like the defeat of other disbelievers whom the Muslims fought and overcame. Nothing comparable to what is reported concerning the battle against the Jews—namely, inanimate objects speaking to point out the person in hiding (2)—has been reported concerning the fighting of those other disbelievers. When we further consider that the hadith describes an extraordinary event that will occur at the end of time and constitutes one of the signs of the Hour, this indicates that the speech during the battle against the Jews will be literal, and not