Saba (Sheba)

Verse 42

Table of Contents

    42. “So on that Day one of you shall not own for the other any profit or harm, and We will say unto those who did injustice: ‘Taste you the chastisement of the Fire which you used to deny’.”

    In Hereafter both sovereignty and ownership belong to only Allah. (None of objects of worship - the Jinn, the angels, and others - has any power. Neither the object of worship can do anything for its worshipper, nor can a worshipper do anything for the object of worship).

    This verse implicitly says that on that Day the hope of the polytheists will change into despair and this fact will be clearly made manifest for them that their objects of worship will not be able to work for them the slightest, but, on the contrary, they will be hatred of them.

    So, in the above mentioned holy verse, as an expressive conclusion, the Holy Qur’an says:

    “So on that Day one of you shall not own for the other any profit or harm…”

    Therefore, neither the angels, who were apparently their objects of worship, can intercede nor are they themselves able to help each other.

    It is here that Allah announces:

    “…and We will say unto those who did injustice: ‘Taste you the chastisement of the Fire which you used to deny’.”

    This is not the first time and verse that the Qur’an refers to polytheists as ‘unjust’ and cruel ones, but in many other verses of the Qur’an ‘disbelief’ has been rendered into ‘injustice’ or ‘pagans and polytheists’ have been introduced as ‘the unjust ones’, because, before anything else, they have done injustice to themselves.

    They take off the honourable crown of worship of Allah from their own heads and put the abased shackle of servitude of idols on their necks and, thus, they naturally lose their entire honour, personality, and fate.

    In fact, in Hereafter, they receive both the punishment of their own polytheism and the punishment of the denial of Resurrection, and both of these meanings are compiled in the sentence:

    “…and We will say unto those who did injustice: ‘Taste you the chastisement of the Fire which you used to deny’.”