Sūrat al-Mulk · Āyāt 6–11

What the passage says

After the warning aimed at the devils, the surah turns to the human beings who deny their Lord and shows where that denial ends. For them there is "the punishment of hell," and it is called "an evil destination" — the worst place anyone could return to (v.6).

The Fire is then drawn as something almost alive. When the deniers are flung in, they hear it draw a horrible, rasping breath while it boils, churning them up and down inside it (v.7). It nearly bursts apart "with rage" — as if its very blaze were fury directed at them (v.8). And it does not receive them once but crowd after crowd: every time a new throng is thrown in, the angel-keepers meet them with a question, "Did not any warner come to you?" (v.8).

The deniers answer honestly. Yes — a warner did come, but we called him a liar and told him, "Allah did not send down anything; you are only in great error" (v.9). Then comes their bitter admission: "Had we listened or applied reason, we would not be among the inmates of the Blaze" — naming the two faculties, hearing and intellect, that they had and refused to use (v.10). With that they own their guilt at the one moment it can no longer help them, and the verse closes the door on them: "away with the inmates of the Blaze!" (v.11).

Convergence — where the six agree

• The keepers' question is not a real inquiry but a rebuke. Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī, and Ṭabāṭabāʾī all read "Did no warner come to you?" as the angels reproaching the damned in the form of a question, not seeking information.
• The Fire's "rage" is a vivid image for the intensity of its blaze against the unbelievers. Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī explain that an enraged person is "torn" by pain that drives him to lash out, so Hell is pictured in the same state; al-Qummī and al-Baḥrānī add that this fury is aimed "against the enemies of God."
• Their ruin was refusal, not inability. al-Qummī and al-Baḥrānī state plainly that the deniers "did hear and did reason, but did not obey nor accept" — and that their own later confession is the proof of it. Ṭabāṭabāʾī and the Enlightening Commentary frame the same point as a teaching on the God-given intellect: they had the means to be guided and squandered it.
• The confession comes too late to help. Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī both note that the deniers acknowledge their sin precisely at the moment when admitting it no longer profits them.
• "Listening" and "reasoning" are two real routes to guidance. Ṭabāṭabāʾī and the Enlightening Commentary read v.10 as naming following the messengers (open to everyone) and grasping the proof oneself (the way of the few) as the two paths the damned ignored.

Divergence — where they differ

• On who "those who disbelieve" are, Ṭabāṭabāʾī goes furthest: he reads it as broader than the idolaters, taking in those who deny God's Lordship outright and also those who accept it but cut God off from His messengers (believing in some prophets and rejecting others). The others simply gloss it as denial of God's oneness and of the prophets, without that sweep.
• On the words "you are only in great error" (v.9), most read them as part of the deniers' own speech to the messengers, but Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī also record a reading in which the angels say this to the deniers, meaning "you are today only in a great punishment." Ṭabāṭabāʾī notes that taking it as the angels' speech is "remote from the context."
• al-Baḥrānī alone supplies the supporting narrations: a saying of Imam al-Ṣādiq that God sends prophets so no one can argue they were never warned, citing this very exchange, and a report from Imam al-Bāqir naming Mālik as the warden who pronounces "away with the inmates of the Blaze."
• The lexical notes split on small details — al-Qummī glosses the Fire's "breath" (shahīq) as a crashing "fall," while Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī, and Ṭabāṭabāʾī treat it as a drawn-out rasping in-breath; Ṭūsī cites Abū al-ʿĀliya that the shahīq is in the chest and the zafīr in the throat. These are differences of illustration, not of meaning.

Each scholar's full text is in the source panels below.