al-Isrāʾ 17:100

Qul law antum tamlikūna khazāʾina raḥmati rabbī idhan la-amsaktum khashyata'l-infāq, wa kāna'l-insānu qatūrā

"Say: 'If you possessed the treasuries of my Lord's mercy, you would still hold them back for fear of spending.' Man is exceedingly grudging."

The same word had occurred in the thirty-first verse: khashyata imlāq (the fear of poverty).

The same word, in two places in the sūra and for two different fears. This is a repetition that can be verified within the sūra.

And I record this as my own reading; its support is the comparison of the two verses: in the thirty-first verse what was feared was not having; here what is feared is the diminishing of what one has. The verse says that the two situations produce the same disposition — and shows it by way of a conditional sentence, as a test: even if you possessed the treasuries.

Miserliness, that is, is not tied in the verse to a lack of means.

قَتُور — root ق-ت-ر: to narrow, to stint. The faʿūl pattern: an intensive.

The root was treated at 25/67 in al-Furqān (wa lam yaqturū), and it was recorded there as one of the two extremes of spending. I rely on that treatment.

And its link within the sūra must be recorded: the twenty-ninth verse had described the same state by an image (yadaka maghlūlatan ilā ʿunuqik). The hundredth verse names the same state with a word: qatūr.

The sūra first pictures the same disposition and then names it. I give this as my own reading.

And the word al-insān is named several times in the sūra, and always together with a fault:

Four places, four separate attributes, and all with kāna. And in the seventieth verse the same being is called karramnā (We have honoured).

I record this as my own reading, and its support is the standing side by side of these five verses: the sūra says two things at once about the human being — that he has been honoured, and that he carries four separate faults. The two do not cancel one another.