Commentators of the Quran have given varying explanations regarding this issue.
There is no doubt that the apparent meaning of the verse (2:154) is that they have a purgatory or spiritual life because their bodies have decomposed. In accordance to the words of Imām Sādiq (a) this life is lived with a mithālī existence (this body is comprised of unusual matter).[1] The explanation of this is the 100th verse of Sūrah Mu’minūn: “Before them is a Partition [purgatory] till the Day they are raised up.”[2]
Some commentators of the Quran consider this life to be a life of the ‘unseen’ and special for the martyrs. The have said that they do not have any more information about how this life is lived and how they benefit from it.
Some have explained the word life in this verse to mean guidance and death to mean misguidance. They have said that it means to command people not to say that people who have been killed were misguided, rather they were guided.
Some others have said that their eternal life means that their name and their ideology will be remembered.
But, as we have said at the beginning, it is clear that none of these probabilities can be accepted. It is not necessary to explain the verse in a way that is not literal or to say that the purgatory is special for the martyrs. Rather, the martyrs have a purgatory and spiritual life being exceptional because of their closeness to divine mercy and being blessed with all kinds of blessings.
[1] Tafsir Nur al-Thaqalayn, v.3, p.559, under verse 100 of Surah Mu’minun; Kafi, v.3, p.245 (printed by Dar al-Kutub al-Islamiyah); Bihar al-Anwar, v.6, p.269 and v.58, p.50
[2] Quran, 23:100
