ٱلْمٓرٰ … ٱللَّهُ ٱلَّذِى رَفَعَ ٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتِ بِغَيْرِ عَمَدٍ تَرَوْنَهَا … وَفِى ٱلْأَرْضِ قِطَعٌ مُّتَجَٰوِرَٰتٌ وَجَنَّٰتٌ مِّنْ أَعْنَٰبٍ وَزَرْعٌ وَنَخِيلٌ صِنْوَانٌ وَغَيْرُ صِنْوَانٍ يُسْقَىٰ بِمَآءٍ وَٰحِدٍ وَنُفَضِّلُ بَعْضَهَا عَلَىٰ بَعْضٍ فِى ٱلْأُكُلِ
"Alif-lām-mīm-rāʾ… It is God who raised up the heavens without pillars that you can see… In the earth there are neighbouring tracts, gardens of vines, fields of grain, and date palms growing several from one root and singly: all are watered with a single water, and yet We make some of them surpass others in what they yield."
بِغَيْرِ عَمَدٍ تَرَوْنَهَا — the construction was treated at Luqmān 31/10, and two readings were tabulated there (there are no pillars that you could see / it has pillars but you do not see them). I do not repeat it, and I hold to the same limit: no conclusion about modern cosmology is to be drawn from this.
كُلٌّ يَجْرِى لِأَجَلٍ مُّسَمًّى — the construction ajalin musammā was treated at al-Aḥqāf 46/3, al-Zumar 39/42, Fāṭir 35/45, Luqmān 31/29 and al-ʿAnkabūt 29/53. In all six places the same thing is said.
The root ص-ن-و — it occurs here for the first time in the index. The sense the lexicographers give: ṣinw, more than one stem issuing from a single root; it is used of the paired stems that part from one root in the date palm. It is recorded that the word is used for brotherhood as well: ṣinwu abīk — your father's brother.
| What is shared | What differs |
|---|---|
| Yusqā bi-māʾin wāḥid — a single water | Nufaḍḍilu baʿḍahā ʿalā baʿḍin fi'l-ukul — what they yield |
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the verse's own sentence: the same soil, the same water, even the same root — and still a different yield. The difference, that is, does not lie in the means that come from outside.
And this observation is the frame for the rest of the sūra: in the sixteenth verse the blind and the seeing, in the seventeenth water and scum, in the nineteenth the one who knows and the blind will be set against each other. All carry the same structure: the same thing was given, the outcome diverged.
At Fāṭir 35/27-28 the variety of colours (mukhtalifun alwānuhā) was treated across three domains, and it was tied there to ʿulamāʾ. The difference in al-Raʿd: there variety is given as a sign, here as a divergence.