al-Ḥijr 15:28-31

Wa idh qāla Rabbuka li'l-malāʾikati innī khāliqun basharan min ṣalṣālin min ḥamaʾin masnūn · Fa-idhā sawwaytuhu wa nafakhtu fīhi min rūḥī fa-qaʿū lahu sājidīn · Fa-sajada'l-malāʾikatu kulluhum ajmaʿūn · Illā Iblīsa abā an yakūna maʿa'l-sājidīn

"Recall when your Lord said to the angels: 'I am creating a human being from dry clay, from a moulded black mud. · When I have shaped him and breathed into him of My spirit, fall down before him in prostration.' · All the angels prostrated together; · only Iblīs refused to be with those who prostrated."

These two stages were treated at Ṣād 38/71-74, and the expression nafakhtu fīhi min rūḥī was analysed at al-Taḥrīm 66/12. I rely on those treatments and do not repeat them.

The note of "two stages" recorded in the section on Ṣād holds here too: taswiya (the completion of the shape) and nafkh (the breathing). The command to prostrate is attached to the end of both.

The difference between Ṣād and al-Ḥijr must be recorded: in Ṣād the material was ṭīn (clay), here ṣalṣālin min ḥamaʾin masnūn. The same scene is recounted with the name of the material changed.

The و-ق-ع root: to fall, to come down upon a place. Qaʿū — "fall down, drop at once."

The verb must be recorded: the command is not "prostrate" but "fall down as those who prostrate". That is, both the movement (wuqūʿ) and the state (sājidīn) are stated.

I record this as an observation about the word order: the sentence pictures the prostration not as a ceremony but as a falling that happens in an instant. And this will meet the word used for Iblīs in the thirty-first verse of the sūra: he abā — he held out.

In Arabic kull and ajmaʿ are both emphases of scope; the two used together leave no exception.

I record this as an observation about the word order: the sentence closes the scope twice, and then an exception comes. That is, the exception comes not from within the scope but from outside it — and the dispute over whether Iblīs was of the angels is born here.

I do not enter this dispute. What the wording of the verse says is this: the command to prostrate was given to the angels, and Iblīs did not prostrate. In another place in the Qurʾān (al-Kahf 18/50 — al-Kahf) it is announced that Iblīs was of the jinn; I rely on that treatment and do not join the two pieces of information to set up a new ruling.

The أ-ب-ي root: to refuse outright, to have nothing to do with. The lexicographers describe ibāʾ as "the harshest form of not wanting": not the choice of not doing, but a refusal to come near doing.

And in Ṣād different words were used in the same place: istakbara wa kāna mina'l-kāfirīn (38/74).

The same event, with two different verbs. One names the cause (pride), the other the act (refusal). This is a verifiable overlap between sūras.