إِنَّ ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ وَعَمِلُوا۟ ٱلصَّٰلِحَٰتِ سَيَجْعَلُ لَهُمُ ٱلرَّحْمَٰنُ وُدًّا · فَإِنَّمَا يَسَّرْنَٰهُ بِلِسَانِكَ لِتُبَشِّرَ بِهِ ٱلْمُتَّقِينَ وَتُنذِرَ بِهِۦ قَوْمًا لُّدًّا · وَكَمْ أَهْلَكْنَا قَبْلَهُم مِّن قَرْنٍ هَلْ تُحِسُّ مِنْهُم مِّنْ أَحَدٍ أَوْ تَسْمَعُ لَهُمْ رِكْزًا
"For those who believe and do righteous deeds al-Raḥmān will bring about an affection. We have made it easy in your tongue so that… you may warn with it a stubborn people. How many generations We destroyed before them: do you sense so much as one of them, or hear from them a whisper?"
The root و-د-د: love, attachment. The root was treated in al-Shūrā 42/23 and in al-ʿAnkabūt 29/25 — where it was recorded that the taking of idols served as a social bond.
| Place | Wudd / mawadda | Its source |
|---|---|---|
| al-ʿAnkabūt 29/25 | Mawaddata baynikum | A bond people build themselves — bounded by the life of this world |
| Maryam 19/96 | Sa-yajʿalu lahumu'r-Raḥmānu wuddā | A bond that is given |
I record this as my own reading: the verb is yajʿalu — "He will bring about". Affection is named not as something earned or organised but as something given.
قَوْمًا لُّدًّا — root ل-د-د: stubborn, not to be pinned down in dispute. The root was treated in al-Baqara 2/204 (aladdu'l-khiṣām), and there the picture the lexicographers record was given — "the two sides of the neck: seized from one side, it slips to the other". I rely on that treatment.
رِكْز — the sense the lexicographers give: a very faint sound, barely heard; a whisper. The word occurs only here in the Qurʾān.
I record this as my own reading: the verse does not ask "is anyone of them left?" — it asks for the smallest trace of sound. Absence, that is, is measured from the lowest threshold.
And the sūra's axis of sound closes here: in the third verse the prayer was made with a hidden voice (nidāʾan khafiyyā); in the eleventh verse Zechariah spoke by a gesture; in the twenty-sixth verse Mary was commanded not to speak; in the fifty-second verse Moses was brought near in secret. The sūra opens with a sound that is not heard and closes with a sound that is not heard — but one is a prayer that is accepted, the other a trace that does not remain.