The claim
Critics argue that a verse promising God will 'never increase you except in torment' depicts a cruel deity who escalates suffering endlessly, which seems disproportionate and unjust for finite human wrongs.
The kernel of concern
The concern is legitimate to take seriously: any worldview must show that ultimate punishment is proportionate and just rather than gratuitous. A God who inflicts ever-mounting pain for no reason would indeed be objectionable, and the verse's severity is real, not softened by the text.
What the verse actually says
The verse (78:30) does not stand alone. It is the conclusion of a sequence: the people addressed are those who 'did not expect any reckoning' (27) and who 'denied Our signs with utter, willful denial' (28), after God had 'recorded everything in a Book' (29). The torment is framed as the just recompense for sustained, knowing rejection, established on a precise and complete record of deeds — not arbitrary cruelty.
The honest position
The Qur'an presents Hell as the consequence of persistent, willful denial of clearly conveyed truth, judged on an exact record. Within this framework the punishment is retributive justice, not gratuitous escalation; the 'increase' expresses finality — that once recompense begins for the unrepentant there is no further reprieve — rather than motiveless sadism.
Strongest counter-arguments
The passage ties the outcome directly to moral agency: those punished chose to reject accountability and revelation. Classical scholars (Ibn Kathīr, al-Qurṭubī) read the verse as severe precisely because it answers entrenched rejection. The broader Qur'an repeatedly stresses that God 'does not wrong anyone' and that recompense matches deeds, and that mercy and warning preceded judgment — the warning of this very surah being part of that mercy. Whether finite acts can warrant lasting consequence is a long-debated theological and philosophical question, but the text's own logic is desert-based, not arbitrary.