al-Isrāʾ 17:80-81

Wa qul rabbi adkhilnī mudkhala ṣidqin wa akhrijnī mukhraja ṣidqin wa'jʿal lī min ladunka sulṭānan naṣīrā · Wa qul jāʾa'l-ḥaqqu wa zahaqa'l-bāṭil, inna'l-bāṭila kāna zahūqā

"Say: 'My Lord! Make me enter by an entrance of truthfulness, and bring me out by an exit of truthfulness, and give me from Your presence a helping power.' And say: 'The truth has come, and falsehood has perished. Falsehood is bound to perish.'"

The prayer is built with two words, and both carry the same qualifier: ṣidq.

I record this as an observation about the structure: the verse asks for the entering and the coming out separately, and sets the same measure on both. The same truthfulness, that is, is asked for at the beginning of a task and at its end.

And the words mudkhal / mukhraj can be read either as nouns of place or as verbal nouns; the lexicographers record this double possibility. Both readings are transmitted.

In the classical commentaries explanations are transmitted as to which event this prayer concerns (the emigration, the return to Mecca, death and resurrection, and the like). I do not elaborate the explanations and I do not pile up reports. The literal structure of the verse can be read independently of all of them, and it keeps its generality.

The root ز-ه-ق: the going out of the life, being spent and coming to nothing. In Arabic zahaqati'l-nafs — the life went out.

I record this as an observation about the language, and its support is the concrete sense of the root: the verb describes not a thing's being defeated but its life going out of it. Falsehood, that is, is pictured not as a rival that is beaten but as something that goes out of itself.

And the second sentence of the verse says this plainly: inna'l-bāṭila kāna zahūqā — in the intensive form, "prone to perish, quick to go out".

I give this as my own reading: the sentence sets the perishing of falsehood not as an event but as a nature. Kāna zahūqā — "it has always been so."

And the same root occurs in al-Anbiyāʾ (21/18: fa-yadmaghuhu fa-idhā huwa zāhiq); but that verse has not yet been analysed in the index.