The warning is not separate from the praise of reconciliation in the preceding passage. Zuhayr has just described how peacemakers used wealth and honorable speech to end bloodshed. He now explains what would be lost if the conflict resumed.
His reasoning proceeds in three stages: (1) the audience already knows war’s nature, (2) reviving it is their own choice, and (3) its effects proliferate long afterward. The passage thus supplies a moral and practical argument for maintaining the settlement.
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Zuhayr ibn Abī Sulmā: War, the Grinding Mill, and the She-Camel Metaphors (Verses 28–32)
The warning is not separate from the praise of reconciliation in the preceding passage. Zuhayr has just described how peacemakers used wealth and honorable speech to end bloodshed. He now explains what would be lost if the conflict resumed.
His reasoning proceeds in three stages: (1) the audience already knows war’s nature, (2) reviving it is their own choice, and (3) its effects proliferate long afterward. The passage thus supplies a moral and practical argument for maintaining the settlement.