(185) “Every soul will taste death, and you will only be paid your rewards in full on the Day of Resurrection. Whoever is drawn away from the Fire and admitted into Paradise has indeed triumphed. The life of this world is nothing but a delusive enjoyment.”

This noble verse encourages detachment from this world because it will perish and cannot endure. It is a delusive enjoyment: it beguiles people with its adornments, deceives them with its illusions, and entices them with its charms. Then it passes away, and people depart from it for the everlasting abode, where every soul will be repaid for whatever good or evil it did in this world.

“Whoever is drawn away”—that is, removed—“from the Fire and admitted into Paradise has indeed triumphed.” In other words, he has attained the supreme triumph of deliverance from painful punishment and entry into gardens of bliss containing what no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and what has never occurred to any human heart.

The implication of the verse is that whoever is not drawn away from ⦗160⦘ the Fire and admitted into Paradise has not triumphed. Rather, he has fallen into everlasting misery and been afflicted with punishment without end.

This verse also contains a subtle indication of the bliss and punishment of the intermediate realm: people receive therein a portion of the recompense for their deeds and are given a foretaste of what they sent ahead. This is understood from His words, “You will only be paid your rewards in full on the Day of Resurrection.” That is, full recompense for deeds will only take place on the Day of Resurrection. Anything before that occurs in the intermediate realm, and may even occur earlier, in this world, as Allah Most High says: “We will surely make them taste the lesser punishment before the greater punishment.”