people of the trench

The account of the makers of the trench opens with a sequence of cosmic oaths that bind the vastness of the heavens to a scene of intense earthly persecution. Before introducing the trench itself, the verses swear by the sky and its towering constellations, by the promised Day, and by "the Witness and that which is witnessed" (85:1-3). This specific framing places a localized atrocity against the backdrop of absolute divine sight and inevitable judgment. The verses entirely omit the names of the perpetrators, the city, or the specific historical era; instead, they strip the event down to its barest elements: a fire, the victims, and the people who lit it.

Who were the makers of the trench?

The text describes these individuals purely through their actions, pronouncing an immediate and severe condemnation upon them. They are identified simply as the architects of a massacre, explicitly cursed with the declaration, "damned were the makers of the trench" (85:4). The verses define the nature of this trench immediately in the following line, characterizing them further as "the makers of the fuel-stoked fire" (85:5). Rather than describing a conventional battlefield or a military siege, the passage outlines a deliberate, stationary execution site. It was an earthwork designed specifically to contain a massive, heavily fed blaze intended solely to consume those they opposed.

What was their crime against the believers?

The physical cruelty of the fire is presented alongside the chilling psychological posture of the people who lit it. The verses single out the callousness of the perpetrators, recording specifically that "They sat down to watch what they were doing to the believers" (85:6-7). The condemnation zeroes in on this deliberate spectatorship. The makers of the trench did not just execute their victims and walk away; they situated themselves as an audience to the suffering they had orchestrated. This earthly act of watching directly answers the earlier cosmic oath swearing by "the Witness and that which is witnessed" (85:3). It establishes a stark contrast: while the perpetrators sat observing their own cruelty, they themselves were being observed by a higher, inescapable witness.

Why were the believers thrown into the fire?

The verses isolate a single motive for the atrocity, dismissing any political, economic, or territorial justification the makers of the trench might have claimed. The text states plainly that "Their only grievance against them was their faith in God, the Mighty, the Praiseworthy" (85:8). The believers were not armed combatants, and they had committed no worldly crime; their sole offense in the eyes of their executioners was their theological conviction.

By stripping away the historical identifiers of the persecutors, the verses elevate the event from a localized tragedy into a permanent record of absolute cruelty met with absolute conviction. The sky's towering constellations and the inevitability of the promised Day frame the earthbound fire, asserting that the suffering in the trench was neither unseen nor forgotten. The final word on the victims rests not on their physical deaths, but on the specific attributes of the God they died recognizing as the Mighty, the Praiseworthy.