وَمَآ أَرْسَلْنَا قَبْلَكَ إِلَّا رِجَالًا نُّوحِىٓ إِلَيْهِمْ فَسْـَٔلُوٓا۟ أَهْلَ ٱلذِّكْرِ إِن كُنتُمْ لَا تَعْلَمُونَ
"Before you too We sent none but men to whom We gave revelation. If you do not know, ask the people of the remembrance."
The objection in the third verse was: hal hādhā illā basharun mithlukum — "is this anything but a human being like yourselves?"
This objection and its answer were treated in detail at al-Furqān on 25/7 and 25/20. The note there was this:
"The answer does not reject the objection's description — it confirms it and generalises it. That is, not 'it is not so' but 'it was always so'. What was objected to is set down not as an exception but as the rule."
I rely on that treatment and do not repeat it. Here I add the difference of wording between the two sūras:
| al-Furqān 25/20 | al-Anbiyāʾ 21/7-8 | |
|---|---|---|
| What is said | la-yaʾkulūna'ṭ-ṭaʿāma wa yamshūna fi'l-aswāq | illā rijālan nūḥī ilayhim |
| Which aspect | Conduct — they eat, they walk in the markets | Kind — they are human, they are men |
| The next verse | wa jaʿalnā baʿḍakum li-baʿḍin fitna | wa mā jaʿalnāhum jasadan lā yaʾkulūna'ṭ-ṭaʿām (8) |
And what is worth recording is this: al-Anbiyāʾ itself builds al-Furqān's sentence one verse later — lā yaʾkulūna'ṭ-ṭaʿām (8). That is, the two sūras give the same answer; one says it directly, the other inside a negation. This is a verifiable sharing of wording.
Rijāl — the root ر-ج-ل, the plural of rajul. The concrete sense of the root is rijl — the foot; rajul means one who walks, one on foot. At al-Furqān the objection yamshī fi'l-aswāq carried the same picture as this root.
| What it conveys | What it excludes |
|---|---|
| Being human | Being an angel |
| Being male | (This aspect too is recorded in the classical commentaries) |
The context of the verse is the first: the objection had said "he cannot be human", the answer says "it was always a human". I transmit the second aspect because it is recorded in the classical commentaries; the proof the verse builds in this context is the first. I do not impose a preference.
نُّوحِىٓ إِلَيْهِمْ — a relative clause, and it is imperfect. Not awḥaynā (perfect) but nūḥī (imperfect). The imperfect conveys continuity and renewal. That is, the distinction is not "not being human" but "receiving revelation" — and this is given as a continuing state.
| View | Who ahlu'dh-dhikr is |
|---|---|
| 1 | The people of the earlier scripture — because the matter is what the past messengers were |
| 2 | Those who have knowledge in general — the wording of the word admits this |
| 3 | Dhikr here is the Qurʾān; its people are those who know it |
And what is to be recorded in respect of word order is this: the sentence lays down a method — in kuntum lā taʿlamūn. Not knowing is set down as the condition of asking. And the word dhikr is the second link of the root that occurs nine times in this sūra; three verses later the Qurʾān itself will be called dhikrukum.