2/17-20 — Two comparisons
The section closes with two long tableaux. Both are built on light and darkness, but they describe two different conditions.
"Their case is like the case of one who kindles a fire: when it lit up what was around him, God took away their light and left them in darknesses, unable to see. Deaf, dumb, blind; they will not return."
The finest detail is here: the man kindled a fire, but God took away their light. The text does not say "nārihim" (their fire), it says "nūrihim" (their light).
Fire has two properties: it gives light and it burns. The verse says that the illuminating side has been taken and the burning side has been left. They have fire in their hands — but it no longer serves, it only harms.
The concrete counterpart of this is: the person has acquired a religious belonging, and has for a moment seen its light — the phrase "when it lit up what was around him" says this, so there had been light for a moment. But once he is emptied out inside, what remains is only its obligation, its risk and its power to burn; the function of showing the way has gone.
The darknesses are plural, the light is singular. This too is a consistent pattern in the Qurʾān: nūr always comes singular, ẓulumāt always plural ("He brings them out of the darknesses into the light", al-Baqara 2/257). The right is one, the wrong innumerable.
The triad "deaf, dumb, blind" corresponds to the three organs of verse 7 — but here the organs are sound and the function is missing. And the order is worth noticing: dumbness stands in the middle. One who does not hear cannot learn, one who does not learn cannot speak, one who cannot speak cannot see his way. When the chain closes, "they will not return".
"Or like those caught in a downpour from the sky, in which there are darknesses, thunder and lightning. They thrust their fingers into their ears against the thunderbolts, in fear of death… The lightning all but snatches away their sight. Whenever it lights their way they walk on, and when darkness falls upon them they stand still."
The second tableau describes a different type from the first. In the first, the light came once and went entirely; here the light comes and goes at intervals.
The portrait is extremely concrete: the man takes a few steps when the lightning flashes and freezes where he stands when the darkness comes down. The advance is broken, insecure, dependent on outward conditions.
This is the description of a second and more common type: the person has not broken away entirely. When a warning comes, in a moment of fear, at a funeral, in an illness, he moves; when conditions return to normal he stops. His walking is determined not by his own decision but by a shock arriving from outside.
The word صَيِّب is from the root ṣ-w-b — both to pour down and to hit the mark. From the same root comes iṣāba. A downpour is something that finds its target; it cannot be escaped.
Their thrusting their fingers into their ears is meaningful in its own right. This movement, made to protect against the thunder, is of no use — cutting off the sound does not stop the thunderbolt. Not hearing the warning does not remove the danger warned of.
The section closes thus: "Had God willed, He would have taken away their hearing and their sight." That is, what they have heard and seen up to now is itself an opening; it has not yet been taken from them. The section ends not with a ruling but with a door left open.
Both say the same thing: the light comes from outside. Neither can the man who kindles a fire hold the light in his hand, nor can the man in the storm summon the lightning. The one thing in a person's hands is to walk when the light comes.
And both tableaux are built on movement: in the first, movement has stopped altogether ("they will not return"); in the second it is intermittent. If one recalls the expression used of the muttaqīn in the fifth verse of the sūra — to be upon the road — the contrast here is complete: one is walking on top of the road, the others are standing in the dark.