And they say: “The Fire will not touch us except for a few counted days.”
Say: “Have you taken a covenant with Allah? Allah never breaks His covenant.
Or do you say about Allah what you do not know?”
It was a claim of the Jews. Some said forty days, others seven; the Qur'an itself gives no number.
That is because they said: “The Fire will not touch us except for a few counted days.”
And what they kept inventing deluded them in their religion.
Al-Baqara: ayyâman ma'dûda. Âl 'Imrân: ayyâman ma'dûdât. The same days, two forms of the same adjective.
Ayyâm, days, is a plural of things. Arabic may describe such a plural in the feminine singular or the feminine plural.
Abû Hayyân: both are eloquent Arabic, like “jibâl shâmikha” and “jibâl shâmikhât”, towering mountains.
And in both verses the word itself says “few”: ma'dûd, counted. Ibn 'Âshûr: one counts what is little, not what is much.
In the Qur'an, ma'dûda comes three times, ma'dûdât three times: the counted days of fasting, of Hajj, and this verse.
So why the plural in Âl 'Imrân and the singular in al-Baqara? The commentators give more than one answer.
As-Samîn al-Halabî: a variation of style; and in Âl 'Imrân the plural strengthens the rebuke of what they did and said.
Al-Alûsî: the plural was chosen because it, like its noun, points to fewness, and suits a place of rebuke.
Read with al-Alûsî, Âl 'Imrân carries the smaller claim: a few counted days, the least. Al-Baqara leaves it vaguer.
Look at what comes before. In al-Baqara, forty verses of their history (2:40-79). In Âl 'Imrân, one verse (3:23).
Hear the difference: after a long charge, the claim stays loose; after a short one, they shrink it to the least.
Now the answer of al-Baqara. It is not “you will burn longer”. It is a question: have you taken a covenant with Allah?
Ibn Kathîr explains: no such covenant exists. So the claim is speech about Allah without knowledge.
So how will it be when We gather them for a Day about which there is no doubt?
And every soul is paid in full what it earned, and they are not wronged.
They said the Fire would touch them only for a few days.
The Qur'an quotes that sentence twice. The last word is not quite the same. Why?
Two forms of one word, each kept exactly where it was said. Nothing in this Book is rounded off.
Tonight, catch one thing you say about Allah out of habit, and ask yourself where you learned it.