al-Muʾminūn 23:118

wa qul rabbi'ghfir wa'rḥam wa anta khayru'l-rāḥimīn

"Say: 'My Lord, forgive and have mercy; and You are the best of those who show mercy.'"

The word order must be recorded, and this is the most striking place in the verse: both verbs come without an object — ighfir and irḥam. It does not say "forgive me" or "have mercy on us".

And in the hundred and ninth verse the same prayer had objects: fa'ghfir lanā wa'rḥamnā.

This is a difference that can be verified from the wording of the two verses.

I record this as my own reading, its ground being this elision: in Arabic the dropping of the object reports generality; the lexicographers record this consistently. The prayer, that is, is not closed off to one person or one group.

And the verse-ending must be recorded: the dropping of the objects also fits the sound scheme of the sūra — throughout the sūra the verse endings close with -ūn / -īn, and this verse closes so as well.

I pass both grounds on; they do not exclude one another.

It is the last of the five superlative constructions in the sūra (14, 29, 72, 109, 118). And the table of the five:

All five of the five constructions are built on the agent of a verb: creating, sending down, providing, showing mercy (twice).

And three of them occur inside a prayer (29, 109, 118). This is a distribution that can be verified from the text.

And a structural entry: the sūra had opened with a verdict (qad aflaḥa'l-muʾminūn) and closes with a request.

The same structure was recorded in al-Baqara: "the sūra, after 286 verses of legal ruling, history and dispute, ends with a request." And at al-Furqān 25/77 too the sūra closed with the word duʿāʾ. I rely on that treatment.

I record this as my own reading, its ground being the shared closing of the three sūras: all three, after ruling, history and dispute, are attached to a request. And in al-Muʾminūn that request is the very speech that was made an object of mockery within the sūra itself.