al-Raʿd 13:8-11

"God knows what every female bears, and what the wombs diminish and what they increase; with Him everything is by a measure… God does not change what is in a people until they change what is in themselves."

مَا تَغِيضُ ٱلْأَرْحَامُ وَمَا تَزْدَادُ — ghayḍ: to diminish, to recede (it is used of water receding). Per the method (Method): I draw no conclusion about modern embryology from this; the verse states the scope of the knowledge. The same field was treated at Fuṣṣilat 41/47 and Fāṭir 35/11; I rely on that treatment.

بِمِقْدَارٍ — the root ق-د-ر was treated at al-Qadr and al-Qamar 54/49 — the core sense is measure.

The root ع-ق-ب: to come after, to follow in another's track. Muʿaqqibāt — those who come one after another.

The construction min bayni yadayhi wa min khalfihi was treated in many places in the index (Fuṣṣilat 41/25 and 41/42, Maryam 19/64): to encompass every side of a thing.

The structure of the sentence must be recorded, and this is an observation about the language:

The two objects are different: one is bi-qawm (the state of the people), the other bi-anfusihim (what is in themselves).

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is that the two constructions differ: the verse ties the change of the outward condition to the change of the inward one. And the order runs one way only: what is inside comes first.

A note, per the method (Method): this verse is not to be pressed into current political argument, and it is not so used in this commentary. The context of the verse must also be recorded: the sentence occurs inside a verse in which the guardians are named, and it runs on with wa idhā arāda'llāhu bi-qawmin sūʾan fa-lā maradda lah. That is: in stating the responsibility of the human being, the sentence does not say that the outcome lies absolutely with the human being.