Al-Hijr (The Rock)

43. “And verily Hell is certainly the promised place of them all.”

44. “It has seven gates, for every gate there shall be a (separate) party of them assigned.”

Allah has directed His most explicit threats towards the followers of the Satan, saying:

“And verily Hell is certainly the promised place of them all.”

Let them not conjecture that they can escape punishment or their accounts would not be scrutinized. It is the same Hell which has got seven gates, and each of which is allocated to one category of the followers of Satan.

The verse says:

“It has seven gates, for every gate there shall be a (separate) party of them assigned.”

These are, in fact, the gates of the sins through which men will be led into Hell. As is the case with those categories of people who enter Paradise, having with them a bag back of righteous deeds and struggles, which qualify them for entering Paradise.

The seven gateways of the Hell probably signifies that the number of the factors for those going to Hell is abundant. That is, there are numerous ways which predispose one to go to Hell.

Like verse 27 of Surah Luqman No. 31 which says:

“And were every tree that is in the earth (made into) pens and the sea (to supply it with ink), with seven more seas to increase it, the words of Allah would not come to an end…”

This means that they cannot write out all Allah’s words, and here an allusion is made to the fact that Allah’s creatures are so enormous in quantity that they are not to be accounted.

Messages

Each of the Paradise and Hell has some doorways.

“It has seven gates…”

(We read in Nahj-ul-Balaghah that the strugglers in the path of Allah will have got a particular entrance to Paradise.)

Hell, just like Paradise, has also got different levels and grades, and each person will be punished in it according to his own offence.