وَإِذْ تَأَذَّنَ رَبُّكُمْ لَئِن شَكَرْتُمْ لَأَزِيدَنَّكُمْ ۖ وَلَئِن كَفَرْتُمْ إِنَّ عَذَابِى لَشَدِيدٌ
"And when your Lord proclaimed: 'If you give thanks I shall surely increase you; and if you deny, My punishment is indeed severe.'"
The concrete sense of the root: the ear (udhun). And from this come the senses of hearing, of giving leave, of proclaiming — idhn, adhān, īdhān are from the same root.
Taʾadhdhana is of Form V, and the lexicographers give this pattern here the sense "he made known plainly and decisively, he proclaimed." What the pattern adds is certainty: not a piece of news but a ruling that has been announced.
And the verb is from the same root as bi-idhni rabbihim in the first verse of this same sūra. This is a weave that can be verified within the sūra: the root comes once as leave, once as proclamation.
The verse builds two conditional sentences and both begin with the same pattern: la-in shakartum / la-in kafartum. The openings are symmetrical to the letter.
| The first condition | The second condition | |
|---|---|---|
| The condition | La-in shakartum | La-in kafartum |
| The answer | La-azīdannakum | Inna ʿadhābī la-shadīd |
| The kind of answer | A verb — a work to be done | A nominal sentence — the statement of an attribute |
| The agent | "I" — explicit, first person | No agent; the quality of the punishment is named |
| The object | Kum — "you" | No pronoun for the one addressed |
| What is said | The requital is stated: I shall increase | The requital is not stated: My punishment is severe |
When the differences are counted one by one, what emerges is this, and I record it as my own reading, its ground being the table itself:
One. The answer to the first condition is a verb with emphasis: la-azīdanna — a lām at its head, a heavy nūn at its end. To enclose a verb with both of these in Arabic is the strongest form of pledge that can be given.
Two. The answer to the second condition, however, is not a verb. It does not say "I shall punish you". What is said is: inna ʿadhābī la-shadīd — "My punishment is severe." This is a threat, but not a statement of enforcement.
Three. In the first answer there is a pronoun for the one addressed (azīdanna-kum). In the second answer the one addressed has been taken out of the sentence.
Four. In the first answer the measure of the increase is not specified — what is to be increased, and by how much, is not said. The object has been left open. In the second answer, by contrast, an adjective is specified: shadīd.
The sum of these four differences is a difference of direction: the requital of thanks is given as a pledge, the requital of denial as a warning. The two are not speaking in the same language.
And this asymmetry is not peculiar to this place alone in the Qurʾān. At al-Ḥijr 15/49-50 the same balance comes distributed across two separate verses: nabbiʾ ʿibādī annī ana'l-Ghafūru'r-Raḥīm · Wa anna ʿadhābī huwa'l-ʿadhābu'l-alīm. There too the first side is given with two names, the second side with one adjective. This overlap between the two sūras will be tabulated separately in the section on al-Ḥijr.
The root ش-ك-ر. The lexicographers record two pictures for the concrete sense of the root: an animal that gives much milk on little fodder (nāqatun shakūr), and a dried-up body filling with rain. The shared core: to take little and give much in return.
I record this as an observation about the word: the picture in the root carries exactly what the verse says. Thanks is, in the root itself, a verb of increase — and the verse's answer is likewise la-azīdannakum (I shall increase you). That is, the condition and its answer say the same idea twice.
What is set opposite the root is kufr, and this too must be recorded: the core of the root ك-ف-ر is to cover (analysed in al-Baqara; I do not repeat it). That is, the opposition is not "to believe / not to believe" — it is between giving in return and covering over. The one who gives thanks makes what is given visible; the ingrate covers it.