فَلَا تَكُ فِى مِرْيَةٍ مِّمَّا يَعْبُدُ هَٰٓؤُلَآءِ … فَٱسْتَقِمْ كَمَآ أُمِرْتَ وَمَن تَابَ مَعَكَ وَلَا تَطْغَوْا۟
"So be not in doubt about what these people serve. They serve only as their fathers served before them. And We shall pay them their share in full, without diminishing it."
This section of the sūra turns from the narratives back to the one addressed. And the first sentence of the turn is a prohibition of doubt: fa-lā taku fī miryatin.
And a ground is given: it happened this way before too. fa'khtulifa fīh — a passive pattern: "and there was disagreement over it".
وَلَوْلَا كَلِمَةٌ سَبَقَتْ مِن رَّبِّكَ لَقُضِىَ بَيْنَهُمْ — the same sentence was treated at Yūnus 10/19 and Fuṣṣilat 41/45; I rely on that treatment. In the sūra the pattern kalimatun sabaqat stands as the reason for the deferral of the judgement.
The root ق-و-م, in Form X (istiqāma): to be upright, to stand straight. The Form X pattern here carries not a seeking but a sense of steadfastness — the lexicographers explain it as "to remain continuously in a state".
| Qualification | Expression |
|---|---|
| The measure | kamā umirt — not as you determine but as you were commanded |
| The scope | wa man tāba maʿak — not you alone |
| The limit | wa lā taṭghaw — plural; do not overstep |
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the inflection of the verbs: the command begins in the singular (istaqim) and ends with a prohibition in the plural (lā taṭghaw). The command to be upright, that is, is addressed to the individual, and the prohibition of overstepping to the community.
The root ط-غ-ي: to exceed the limit, to overflow the bound. The root was treated at al-Ḥāqqa 69/11 (lammā ṭaghā'l-māʾ) of water overflowing, and at al-ʿAlaq 96/6 of the human being.
I record this as an observation about the language: istiqāma and ṭughyān are two directions on the same axis — the one is to stand on the line, the other to cross it. The verse sets them side by side in a single sentence.
إِنَّهُۥ بِمَا تَعْمَلُونَ بَصِيرٌ — and the sentence of watchfulness is repeated in this region of the sūra for the fourth time (92: muḥīṭ, 111: khabīr, 112: baṣīr, 123: wa mā rabbuka bi-ghāfilin ʿammā taʿmalūn).