2/204-206 — The man whose speech is pleasing
"Among the people is one whose speech about the life of this world pleases you; and he calls God to witness what is in his heart. Yet he is the fiercest of adversaries."
أَلَدُّ ٱلْخِصَام — root ل-د-د: ladīd, the two sides of the neck and of the jaw. The lexicographers describe the aladd as "an adversary who, seized from one side, slips to the other, who cannot be held". The word itself carries a picture of not being able to be held.
1. His speech is fine — yuʿjibuka qawluhu 2. He swears — he calls God to witness what is in his heart 3. When he turns away — wa idhā tawallā — his work changes
وَإِذَا تَوَلَّىٰ سَعَىٰ فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ لِيُفْسِدَ فِيهَا وَيُهْلِكَ ٱلْحَرْثَ وَٱلنَّسْلَ — "he destroys the tilth and the stock."
حَرْث (tilth) and نَسْل (stock) are set side by side. One grows from the ground, the other comes from the human being; both are things that reach into the future. Corruption, that is, is described as the cutting off not of the present but of continuity. The root ح-ر-ث — to plough, to sow — was treated at 56/63 (al-Wāqiʿa) as the human being's portion; here the destruction of that portion is recounted.
وَإِذَا قِيلَ لَهُ ٱتَّقِ ٱللَّهَ أَخَذَتْهُ ٱلْعِزَّةُ بِٱلْإِثْمِ — "when he is told 'fear God', his pride drives him into sin."
The subject of the sentence is al-ʿizza: pride takes him, carries him off. The person, that is, does not make a decision; he is himself seized. What is recounted is not the warning's being ineffective but its having the reverse effect — the warning increases the resistance.