63إِنّا جَعَلناها فِتنَةً لِلظّالِمينَMuhammad AsadVerily, We have caused it to be a trial for evildoers:1It cannot be often enough repeated that all Qur'anic references to hell and paradise - and, for that matter, all descriptions of men's conditions in the hereafter - are, of necessity, highly allegorical (see Appendix I) and therefore liable to be grossly misunderstood if one takes them in their literal sense or, conversely, interprets them in an arbitrary manner (cf. 3:7 and the corresponding notes 5, 7 and 8): and this, to my mind, explains why the symbol of the "tree of deadly fruit" - one of the metonyms for the suffering of the sinners in the hereafter - has become "a trial (fitnah) for evildoers" (or "for men" in 17:60). See in this connection 74:31, which is the earliest Qur'anic instance of this concept of "trial".