Does 'aḥqāb' (ages upon ages) in 78:23 mean the punishment of Hell eventually ends?

Answer

Verse 78:23 says the transgressors remain لَّابِثِينَ فِيهَا أَحْقَابًا — "for ages upon ages" (aḥqāb, plural of ḥuqub, a long span of years). Some have wondered whether naming a number of "ages" implies the punishment ends. The classical commentators answer that it does not. Ibn Kathīr, al-Ṭabarī, and al-Qurṭubī explain the ages as successive and unending: whenever one ḥuqub closes, another follows, without limit — an idiom of perpetuity, not a final count. This harmonises 78:23 with the explicit verses that the deniers "abide therein forever." But al-Qurṭubī preserves a mercy here that is easy to miss, and it is the heart of the matter: this endless abiding is for the disbelievers the passage is describing — those defined by denying the resurrection. The monotheist who enters the Fire for grave sins is not abandoned forever; the broader Qur'an and Sunnah teach that such a believer is eventually brought out. So even inside the sternest passage of the surah, God's justice is shown to be exact, never vengeful — it distinguishes the one who rejected Him outright from the one who believed and faltered. Faith is never wasted with God.