وَلَئِنْ أَذَقْنَا ٱلْإِنسَٰنَ مِنَّا رَحْمَةً ثُمَّ نَزَعْنَٰهَا مِنْهُ إِنَّهُۥ لَيَـُٔوسٌ كَفُورٌ · وَلَئِنْ أَذَقْنَٰهُ نَعْمَآءَ بَعْدَ ضَرَّآءَ مَسَّتْهُ لَيَقُولَنَّ ذَهَبَ ٱلسَّيِّـَٔاتُ عَنِّىٓ إِنَّهُۥ لَفَرِحٌ فَخُورٌ · إِلَّا ٱلَّذِينَ صَبَرُوا۟ وَعَمِلُوا۟ ٱلصَّٰلِحَٰتِ أُو۟لَٰٓئِكَ لَهُم مَّغْفِرَةٌ وَأَجْرٌ كَبِيرٌ
wa la-in adhaqnā'l-insāna minnā raḥmatan thumma nazaʿnāhā minhu innahū la-yaʾūsun kafūr · wa la-in adhaqnāhu naʿmāʾa baʿda ḍarrāʾa massathu la-yaqūlanna dhahaba'l-sayyiʾātu ʿannī innahū la-fariḥun fakhūr · illā'lladhīna ṣabarū wa ʿamilū'l-ṣāliḥāti ulāʾika lahum maghfiratun wa ajrun kabīr
"If We let a human being taste a mercy from Us and then draw it away from him, he becomes despairing and ungrateful. · If We let him taste a favour after a hardship that had touched him, he says without fail, 'The evils have gone from me'; he is exultant and boastful. · Except those who are patient and do righteous deeds: for them there is forgiveness and a great reward."
The two verses describe two situations that are the reverse of one another, and each is given a pair of adjectives.
| Verse | Situation | Reaction | The pair of adjectives |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9 | Mercy → withdrawal | Giving up hope | yaʾūs + kafūr |
| 10 | Hardship → favour | Claiming it as one's own | fariḥ + fakhūr |
And all four adjectives are in patterns that report not a passing state but a settled one (faʿūl and faʿil): they report not a passing state but a settled disposition.
The root ك-ف-ر: to cover. Kafūr — deeply ungrateful, that is, one who covers over the good he has received. The "covering" core of the root has been treated in many places across this series.
I record this as an observation: in the ninth verse the two adjectives look at the same event from two directions. Yaʾūs looks to the future (it will not come again), kafūr to the past (it had never come at all).
The root ف-ر-ح: to rejoice; and to grow giddy. The word is used in the Qurʾān both positively and negatively; in its negative use fariḥ is joy that has lost its measure. The root was treated at al-Qaṣaṣ 28/76 (lā tafraḥ inna'llāha lā yuḥibbu'l-fariḥīn).
The root ف-خ-ر: to boast, to vaunt oneself. Fakhūr — much given to boasting. The root was treated at al-Ḥadīd 57/23 (mukhtālin fakhūr).
The man does not say "God has removed the evils from me." He says "The evils have gone from me." The verb is intransitive, and its grammatical subject is al-sayyiʾāt; there is no agent in the sentence.
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the intransitive construction of the verb: the departure of the hardship is told as though it had happened of itself. And the next adjective (fakhūr — boastful) fills that gap: the man himself steps into the place of the agent.
And the opposite is present within the sūra: in the sentence Hūd speaks to his people, yursili'l-samāʾa ʿalaykum midrārā (52), the agent is explicit.
I record this as an observation, and its ground is the content of the two verses: the error in the ninth verse was made in loss, the one in the tenth in gain. The first condition of the exception (ṣabr) answers to loss, the second (ʿamal) to gain. This is an explanation, not a ruling.
And the word ṣabr will return in the backbone of the sūra: in the forty-ninth verse the Prophet will be told fa-ṣbir, and in the hundred and fifteenth wa'ṣbir.