More on Linguistics

 وَلَقَدۡ ذَرَأۡنَا لِجَهَنَّمَ ڪَثِيرً۬ا مِّنَ ٱلۡجِنِّ وَٱلۡإِنسِۖ

“And surely, We have created many of the jinn and mankind for Hell”

The first few lines of Verse 179 in Surah Al-A’raaf were quite difficult for me to memorize for a particular reason. In Arabic, God says   وَلَقَدۡ ذَرَأۡنَا لِجَهَنَّمۖ. Notice where the لِ is. It comes before jahannam/hell. لِ typically means for. So God says, we have created so and so FOR hell. Thus, the reason behind that creation was for hell’s sake. This really got to me. Rather than putting the لِ before the word many, God placed it before hell. If it were placed before “many”, that would change the meaning to its entirety. That would say that we created hell for these people. But now as the verse stands, it is actually quite the opposite. “We created these people for hell”. What does that tell you? It tells me the extent of which these people have disobeyed God. To the extent that God says they were created for hell, rather than hell being created for them. These people are blatantly disobeying God and associating partners Him.

We ask God to protect us from any such acts on keep us on His straight path…Ameen.