وَإِنَّهُۥ عَلَىٰ ذَٰلِكَ لَشَهِيدٌ
Root: ش-ه-د. The concrete sense of the root is to be present. Shahida'l-majlisa — he attended the gathering, he was there. From the same root:
- مَشْهَد — the place where an event passes, a scene.
- شَهَادَة — testimony. And the same word is used in the sense of "the visible world" as well: ʿālimu'l-ghaybi wa'l-shahāda (al-Ḥashr 59/22) — the one who knows the unseen and the seen alike.
- مَشْهُود — that which is witnessed.
- شَهِيد — both "witness" and "martyr". The lexicographers give different explanations of the relation of the second sense to the root; I do not enter into that disagreement.
That the core of the root is being present gives the logic of the concept of testimony: you can bear witness only to where you have been. A witness is not someone who has heard of the event from outside; he is someone who has been inside the event.
| View | Who is the witness | Its ground | Its weak side |
|---|---|---|---|
| Man | Man is witness to his own ingratitude; he knows it and cannot deny it | All the pronouns before it and after it belong to man (innahū li-ḥubbi'l-khayri la-shadīd); it is a principle that the chain of pronouns should not be broken. And there is an indication from within the Qurʾān: "Indeed man is clear evidence against himself" (al-Qiyāma 75/14) | The shahīd pattern is mostly used of God in the Qurʾān |
| God | God is witness to man's ingratitude | Shahīd is among the names of God; the eleventh verse of the sūra closes in the same direction (inna Rabbahum bihim yawmaʾidhin la-khabīr) | In the eighth verse the pronoun refers unmistakably to man; for it to refer to God in verse 7 and to man in verse 8 would make an abrupt transition |
Both views have been defended in the classical sources. The first view is the more widespread and is the more consistent in respect of the chain of pronouns: in verses 6, 7 and 8 the subject stays the same.
I too prefer the first view. It is not binding; the second view has a force of its own, and it accords with the last verse of the sūra.
If the witness is the person himself, the verse says something very heavy: ingratitude is not unconscious.
This coincides exactly with what this commentary established at al-Baqara 2/6. There it was stated that kufr is not "failing to know" but "covering over what one knows", and therefore that ignorance and kufr are separate things. Here the same thing is said of ingratitude: a person is the witness of his own ingratitude, because he was inside the event.
And the root's sense of "being present" settles this: man has been present in his own life. A person's competence to bear witness to his own lifetime cannot be disputed — he is the only one who was there.
This finding has one further consequence. If ingratitude is not known, its remedy is information: the person is reminded of what he has received. But if it is known, the problem does not lie in knowledge. Three verses later the sūra will say this directly: "Does he not know?" — the question is a question of reproach, and its answer is "he does know".
The link with al-Takāthur. Sūrat al-Takāthur set its diagnosis as a problem of knowledge: "you shall soon know", "if only you knew with the knowledge of certainty". There the question was the kind of the knowledge — the knowledge was there but it did not work. Al-ʿĀdiyāt comes to the same place by another road: the knowledge is there, the person is even his own witness; and still it does not work.