وَإِن تَجْهَرْ بِٱلْقَوْلِ فَإِنَّهُۥ يَعْلَمُ ٱلسِّرَّ وَأَخْفَى · ٱللَّهُ لَآ إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا هُوَ لَهُ ٱلْأَسْمَآءُ ٱلْحُسْنَىٰ
Wa in tajhar bi'l-qawli fa-innahu yaʿlamu's-sirra wa akhfā · Allāhu lā ilāha illā huw, lahu'l-asmāʾu'l-ḥusnā
"Though you speak the word aloud, He knows the secret and what is more hidden than it. · God — there is no god but He. To Him belong the most beautiful names."
The construction of the sentence must be recorded: three degrees are counted but only two are named.
| Degree | Expression | What |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tajhar bi'l-qawl | What is said aloud |
| 2 | Al-sirr | The secret — unsaid, held within |
| 3 | Wa akhfā | What is more hidden than it — not named |
| Reading | What akhfā is |
|---|---|
| 1 | What is hidden even from the person himself — what he has not yet become aware of |
| 2 | What has not yet been born — the thought that will occur to him in the future |
| 3 | The furthest limit of hiddenness, without specifying a degree |
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is that the elative is left without an object: the sentence does not define the third step. Had it defined it, that too would have been a limit. That it leaves off naming shows that the limit has been removed.
A point of word order is worth recording: the sentence does not say "even if you speak in secret He knows" — it says "even if you speak aloud".
The expected construction is this: "even if you conceal it, He knows". The verse does the opposite: it makes openness the condition and hiddenness the answer.
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the direction of the condition: the sentence is saying that raising the voice is unnecessary. And this is on the same line as the second verse of the sūra: there it was said that the Book is not a burden on the one addressed, here that the one addressed need not raise his voice. Both remove a surplus.
And a link within the sūra must be recorded: in the hundred and eighth verse all voices will be hushed (fa-lā tasmaʿu illā hamsā), and in the ninety-sixth the Sāmirī's secret will come out into the open. Sound and hiddenness are two axes at work throughout the sūra.
The expression was treated at al-Ḥashr on 59/24, and it was recorded there: lahu has been brought forward, and in Arabic the fronting of the predicate conveys ḥaṣr (restriction) — "the most beautiful names belong to Him alone"; ḥusnā is the feminine elative of aḥsan, so not "beautiful names" but "the most beautiful names". I rely on that treatment and do not repeat it here.
It was also recorded there: the expression occurs in four places in the Qurʾān (al-Aʿrāf 7/180, al-Isrāʾ 17/110, Ṭāhā 20/8, al-Ḥashr 59/24). This verse is one of those four.
And there is something that belongs here: where the sentence stands. The eighth verse is the sentence that closes the opening block of the sūra; and in the ninth verse the text passes straight into the story of Moses.
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the sequence: the story begins after a speaker whose identity has been declared. And in the fourteenth verse of the story the same sentence will come once more, this time said to Moses: innanī ana'llāhu lā ilāha illā ana. The eighth verse in the third person, the fourteenth in the first. This is a repetition that can be verified within the sūra.