The Quran

Preface

ضَرَبَ اللَّهُ مَثَلًا لِلَّذينَ كَفَرُوا امرَأَتَ نوحٍ وَامرَأَتَ لوطٍ ۖ كانَتا تَحتَ عَبدَينِ مِن عِبادِنا صالِحَينِ فَخانَتاهُما فَلَم يُغنِيا عَنهُما مِنَ اللَّهِ شَيئًا وَقيلَ ادخُلَا النّارَ مَعَ الدّاخِلينَ

Yusuf Ali

God sets forth, for an example to the Unbelievers, the wife of Noah¹ and the wife of Lut:² they were (respectively) under two of our righteous servants, but they were false to their (husbands),³ and they profited nothing before God on their account, but were told: “Enter ye the Fire along with (others) that enter!”

Read Noah’s story in 11:36-48. Evidently his contemporary world had got so corrupt that it needed a great Flood to purge it. “None of the people will believe except those who have believed already. So grieve no longer over their evil deeds.” But there were evil ones in his own family. A foolish and undutiful son is mentioned in 11:42-46. Poor Noah tried to save him and pray for him as one “of his family”; but the answer came: “he is not of thy family; for his conduct is unrighteous”. We might expect such a son to have a mother like him, and here we are told that it was so. Noah’s wife was also false to the standards of her husband, and perished in this world and the Hereafter.
The wife of Lut has already been mentioned more than once. See 11:81, and n. 1577; 7:83, and n. 1051; etc. The world around her was wicked and she sympathised with and followed that wicked world, rather than her righteous husband. She suffered the fate of her wicked world.
False to their husbands: not necessarily in sex, but in the vital spiritual matters of truth and conduct. They had the high privilege of the most intimate relationship with the noblest spirits of their age: but if they failed to rise to the height of their dignity, their relationship did not save them. They could not plead that they were the wives of pious husbands. They had to enter Hell like any other wicked women. There is personal responsibility before God. One soul cannot claim the merits of another, any more than one pure soul can be injured by association with a corrupt soul. The pure one should keep its purity intact. See the next two examples.