Muhammad ibn Abdullah ibn Abi Tawbah informed us; Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn al-Harith informed us; Muhammad ibn Yaqub al-Kisa'i informed us; Abdullah ibn Mahmud informed us; Ibrahim ibn Abdullah al-Khallal informed us; Abdullah ibn al-Mubarak related to us, from Safwan ibn Amr, from Abdullah ibn Busr, from Abu Umamah—may Allah be pleased with him—from the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, concerning His saying, “And he will be given to drink of festering water, which he will sip”: He said, “It will be brought near to his mouth, and he will loathe it. When it is brought close to him, it will scorch his face and the scalp of his head will fall away. When he drinks it, it will tear apart his intestines until it comes out through his anus.” Allah says: “They will be given to drink boiling water, which will sever their intestines” (Muhammad 47:15). And He says: “If they cry out for relief, they will be relieved with water like molten oil, which will scorch their faces” (1) (al-Kahf 18:29).
His saying: “Death will come to him from every direction” means that he will experience the anguish and pain of death in every part of his body.
Ibrahim al-Taymi said: Even from beneath every hair on his body.
It is also said that death will come to him from before him and behind him, from above him and beneath him, and from his right and his left.
“And he will not die,” and thus find relief. Ibn Jurayj said: His soul will hang at his throat: it will neither leave through his mouth so that he dies, nor return to its place within him so that life may benefit him. Its parallel is: “Then he will neither die therein nor live” (al-A'la 87:13).
“And ahead of him,” that is, before him, “is a severe punishment”—a harsh punishment. It is also said that the severe punishment is abiding eternally in the Fire.
“The example of those who disbelieve in their Lord is that their deeds are like ashes blown fiercely by the wind on a stormy day. They will be unable to retain anything of what they had earned. That is what is far astray” (18).
“The example of those who disbelieve in their Lord—their deeds” means: the deeds of those who disbelieve in their Lord. This is like His saying: “On the Day of Resurrection, you will see those who lied about Allah—their faces...” (al-Zumar 39:60), meaning: you will see the faces of those who lied about Allah blackened. “Like ashes blown fiercely by the wind on a stormy day”: He describes the day as stormy, although storminess is an attribute of the wind, because the wind occurs on that day—just as one says, “a hot day” or “a cold day,” because heat and cold occur in it.
It is also said that it means: on a day of storming wind; the word “wind” is omitted because it had already been mentioned. This is a parable set forth