وَمِن ثَمَرَٰتِ ٱلنَّخِيلِ وَٱلْأَعْنَٰبِ تَتَّخِذُونَ مِنْهُ سَكَرًا وَرِزْقًا حَسَنًا إِنَّ فِى ذَٰلِكَ لَـَٔايَةً لِّقَوْمٍ يَعْقِلُونَ
Wa min thamarāti'l-nakhīli wa'l-aʿnābi tattakhidhūna minhu sakaran wa rizqan ḥasanā, inna fī dhālika la-āyatan li-qawmin yaʿqilūn
"And from the fruits of the date palm and the vine you take both sakar and a good provision. In that there is a sign for a people who reason."
Root: س-ك-ر. The lexicographers give the concrete sense of the root thus: to cut off the flow of a thing, to block it. Sakara'l-nahra — he dammed the river; from this, sakr — the blocking of the mind's way, drunkenness. The same picture in the root is seen elsewhere in the Qurʾān as well: sukkirat abṣārunā — "our eyes have been sealed over" (al-Ḥijr 15/15).
| View | What sakar is | Ground |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | An intoxicating drink | The commonest sense of the root; and the verse's setting it against rizqan ḥasanā |
| 2 | Processed products such as vinegar, syrup, stewed fruit | Some lexicographers record sakar in the sense "what is made from fruit" |
| 3 | What is eaten, what is made use of | It is transmitted that in some dialects sakar has the sense "food" |
And what must be recorded in point of word order is this: the verse separates two things with a wāw: sakaran and rizqan ḥasanā. The two are therefore not the same thing. And only the second is given an adjective: ḥasan (good).
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is this asymmetry of adjectives: that no adjective is given to the first shows that the sentence sets no value upon it. The second is expressly described as "good". The sentence enumerates two products but does not put them on a level.
No legal ruling is issued. In the classical sources the relation of this verse to the ruling on wine has been debated at length; this commentary does not enter that debate. What the verse does in its wording is to separate two products and to call only one of them "good".
In the eleventh verse al-nakhīl and al-aʿnāb had already been enumerated — in their raw state. In the sixty-seventh the same pair comes back with its processed product.
| Verse | Expression | Its state |
|---|---|---|
| 11 | Yunbitu lakum bihi'l-zarʿa wa'l-zaytūna wa'l-nakhīla wa'l-aʿnāb | Brought forth — in nature |
| 67 | Wa min thamarāti'l-nakhīli wa'l-aʿnābi tattakhidhūna minh | Processed — by human hands |
This is a repetition verifiable within the sūra. And I record this as my own reading, its ground being the change of verb: in the eleventh verse the verb is yunbitu — God brings forth. In the sixty-seventh, tattakhidhūna — you take. The second enumeration thus takes the human hand into the list as well.
And this also shows how an item of the enumeration can be misused: two things come out of the same fruit, and the two are not equal. The enumeration records how what is given is used as well.