Sūrah 83 · Āyāt 7–17

The passage (83:7-17). A double {Kalla!} ("Nay!") breaks the warning open. The record of the wicked, the passage declares, is fixed {in Sijjin} — and {what will make you know what Sijjin is? A written record}. {Woe that Day to the deniers}, {those who deny the Day of Judgment}; {and none denies it except every transgressor steeped in sin}, who, hearing the revelation, dismisses it as {Tales of the ancients}. The cause is then named: {Nay! rather what they earned has rusted (rana) upon their hearts}; {indeed from their Lord that Day they will be veiled}; {then they will burn in Hellfire}; {then it will be said, "This is that which you used to deny."}

Sijjin and the record. The present sources offer a spectrum. Al-Tabarsi and al-Tusi gather the classical opinions — Sijjin as "the seventh lowest earth" (Ibn 'Abbas, Mujahid, Qatada), a pit in Gehenna, or, lexically, "severity" (Abu 'Ubayda's verse), or the prison-of-eternity on the hyperbolic pattern fa'il — and report Ka'b al-Ahbar's account of the wicked soul refused by heaven and earth until it sinks to Sijjin, "the place of the host of Iblis." Al-Mizan argues from the parallel with 'Illiyyun (83:18) that Sijjin means confinement in "lowness upon doubled lowness," and that "the record" (kitab) is not the scroll of deeds but "what God apportioned them of requital by His binding decree," dismissing the scattered alternatives as "sheer arbitrariness" that sever the verses' single context. All note that {a written record} is meant for intimidation, its decree "made plain, with no ambiguity."

The rusted heart. On {rana 'ala qulubihim}, al-Tabarsi, al-Tusi, and al-Mizan agree (via al-Raghib) that al-rayn is rust overspreading the heart's polish so it can no longer tell good from evil. Al-Mizan draws three principles: evil deeds leave "engravings in the soul"; these block the perception of truth; and the soul by primal nature has a clarity that discerns "piety from profligacy" (citing Shams 7-8). Al-Tabarsi and al-Tusi add al-Balkhi's point that the verse vindicates the "People of Justice," since God ascribes the rust to what they themselves earned — not an arbitrary sealing. Al-Tabarsi and al-Mizan both transmit the white-spot/black-spot hadith (al-'Ayyashi/al-Kafi from Imam al-Baqir; al-Durr al-Manthur from Abu Hurayra) and al-Sadiq's word that "the heart rusts, and when you remind it of God's bounties it is polished." On {veiled from their Lord}, al-Tabarsi, al-Tusi, and al-Mizan read deprivation of "the honor of nearness" or "the reward of their Lord," al-Mizan stressing this is not a spatial veil since the lifting of intermediary causes is realized for all (Ghafir 16; Nur 25).

The Imami reading. Al-Qummi and al-Burhan transmit, strictly as-attributed, a polemical ta'wil: the "record of the wicked" and the deniers are glossed as named figures of Imami polemic ("so-and-so and so-and-so," "the first and the second," and the coded epithets "Zurayq and Habtar," referents left unidentified here), "who used to deny the Messenger of God." Al-Burhan adds Imam al-Kazim's reading that the wicked are "those who acted wickedly against the right of the Imams," and that {this is that which you used to deny} "means the Commander of the Faithful" — affirmed as a revealed reading (tanzil). These are reported as the sources transmit them, not as the received text.