وَمَا كَانَ ٱلنَّاسُ إِلَّآ أُمَّةً وَٰحِدَةً فَٱخْتَلَفُوا۟ · وَيَقُولُونَ لَوْلَآ أُنزِلَ عَلَيْهِ ءَايَةٌ مِّن رَّبِّهِۦ فَقُلْ إِنَّمَا ٱلْغَيْبُ لِلَّهِ فَٱنتَظِرُوٓا۟ إِنِّى مَعَكُم مِّنَ ٱلْمُنتَظِرِينَ
"People were no more than a single community; then they fell into disagreement. Had a word not gone forth beforehand from your Lord, judgment would long since have been given between them over what they disagreed about. · They say: 'Should a sign not have been sent down to him from his Lord?' Say: 'The unseen belongs to God alone. So wait; I am with you among those who wait.'"
أُمَّةً وَٰحِدَةً — the construct occurs in more than one place in the Qurʾān and was treated from another side at al-Zukhruf 43/33 (wa lawlā an yakūna'n-nāsu ummatan wāḥidatan). I rely on that treatment.
And the word order here must be recorded: mā kāna … illā — the pattern of restriction. The information "people were at the beginning a single community" is given, that is, with a restriction: they were nothing else.
كَلِمَةٌ سَبَقَتْ مِن رَّبِّكَ — "a word that had gone forth beforehand from your Lord". The construct will come back in the thirty-third and ninety-sixth verses of the sūra in the form ḥaqqat kalimatu rabbik.
| Verse | Expression | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| 19 | Kalimatun sabaqat — gone forth beforehand | The deferral of judgment |
| 33 | Ḥaqqat kalimatu rabbika ʿala'lladhīna fasaqū | The coming true of the judgment |
| 96 | Ḥaqqat ʿalayhim kalimatu rabbika lā yuʾminūn | The same judgment, again |
| 64 | Lā tabdīla li-kalimāti'llāh | Unalterability |
Four occurrences, one root. I record this as an observation: the sūra ties the deferral, the coming true and the unalterability all to the same word.
This demand was treated in many places in the index: at al-Raʿd 13/7 the same sentence (law lā unzila ʿalayhi āyatun min rabbih) occurred and came back there twice more; the same line was treated at al-Furqān 25/21 (law lā unzila ʿalayna'l-malāʾika) and at al-Kahf 18/57. I rely on that treatment.
And the answer Yūnus gives must be recorded, because it differs from the others: innama'l-ghaybu lillāh.
| Place | Answer |
|---|---|
| al-Raʿd 13/7 | Innamā anta mundhir — a description of the task |
| al-Raʿd 13/38 | Mā kāna li-rasūlin an yaʾtiya bi-āyatin illā bi-idhni'llāh — authority |
| Yūnus 10/20 | Innama'l-ghaybu lillāh — the field of knowledge |
Yūnus ties the demand to a question of knowledge. I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the wording of the answer: what is asked for is a sign that would come from an unseen field; and by stating whose that field is, the one who demands it is left standing outside the door.
Verse 20: fa'ntaẓirū innī maʿakum mina'l-muntaẓirīn Verse 102: qul fa'ntaẓirū innī maʿakum mina'l-muntaẓirīn
This is a repetition that can be counted and verified within the sūra. And the contexts of the two places differ: in the twentieth verse it answers the demand for a sign, in the hundred and second the awaiting of what befell the earlier peoples.
I record this as my own reading: the same sentence stands like a parenthesis set at the two ends of the sūra. And what the sentence does is worth recording: the waiting of the other side is accepted, but the speaker steps into the same rank — innī maʿakum. The waiting, that is, is not refused; it is shared.