We have destroyed! Our punishment came upon it by night or while its people rested at noon.”

“Their only cry when Our punishment came upon them was: ‘Indeed, we were wrongdoers.’”

In another verse, He says:

“Do the people of the towns feel secure that Our punishment will not come upon them by night while they sleep?”

Thus, He made “towns” refer to the inhabitants themselves. He also says:

“How many a town, stronger than your town which drove you out, have We destroyed! They had no one to help them.”

Here, too, they are the inhabitants. Likewise, the Most High says:

“And those towns—We destroyed them when they did wrong, and We appointed a time for their destruction.”

The Most High also says:

“Or like the one who passed by a town that lay in ruins, its roofs fallen in.”

Here, the place is meant, not the inhabitants. Yet it must be understood that it was once inhabited: a place is only called a town if it has been built up for habitation. The word’s root sense is gathering; hence the expression, “I gathered the water in the basin,” meaning that I collected it there.

Similarly, the term “human being” encompasses both body and soul. What is said of a human being applies sometimes to one and sometimes to the other, because they are inseparably connected. The same applies to a town: when its inhabitants are punished, it falls into ruin, and when it falls into ruin, that is a punishment for its inhabitants. Whatever harm befalls either affects the other, just as whatever befalls either body or soul affects the other.

Thus, His words:

“Ask the town,”

are like His words:

“A town that was safe and at peace.”

Here, the word refers to the inhabitants, without any word being implied or omitted. Thus, even assuming that figurative usage exists in the language, there is no figurative usage in the Quran. Indeed, dividing language into literal and figurative usage is itself a newly introduced innovation of which the early generations never spoke. Later scholars hold two views on it, and the dispute is not merely verbal. Rather, the contention is that this division itself is invalid: the two categories cannot be distinguished. Consequently, every distinction they propose proves invalid, and whenever one of them proposes a distinction, another refutes it—just as the logicians claim that the attributes subsisting in the things they qualify