تيه

Core meaning

To go to and fro without arriving: to remain lost on the earth without ever reaching the place one was meant to enter.

Uses

1. يَتِيهُونَ → "wandering" : the punishment of a people that refused to enter: a movement without end, bounded in time.

   • «أَرْبَعِينَ سَنَةًۭ يَتِيهُونَ فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ» — "for forty years they will wander on the earth" (5:26)

Evidence from the text

The word occurs only once, and the passage defines it. The people refused to enter the land that was meant for them (5:24); the answer separates two things: the land "is, then, prohibited to them, forever", and they will remain lost on the earth for forty years (5:26). The prohibition bears on a place, the punishment on a length of time.

The word therefore says a movement that does not stop and does not arrive: walking without ever reaching the place one had refused to go, for as long as it takes the generation that refused to pass.

Distinctions

• عمه — to go about blindly: no longer seeing the path, whereas تيه is finding no path that leads anywhere
• ضلل — to go astray: to leave the right path
• غوى — to err: to go adrift far from the way, through seduction or through one's own conduct, whereas تيه is finding no path that leads anywhere

See also

حرم (to prohibit)