al-Nūr 24:32

Wa ankiḥu'l-ayāmā minkum wa'l-ṣāliḥīna min ʿibādikum wa imāʾikum, in yakūnū fuqarāʾa yughnihimu'llāhu min faḍlih, wa'llāhu wāsiʿun ʿalīm

"Marry off those among you who are unmarried, and those of your male and female slaves who are fit for it. If they are poor, God will enrich them of His bounty. God is of ample bounty, knowing."

The thirty-second verse comes immediately after the thirtieth and thirty-first, and the arrangement is worth noting.

The two verses had given a command to hold back. The thirty-second gives a command to open a way.

And this ordering carries a logic, which I record as my own reading: when a boundary is laid down, a way must also be opened that makes it possible to stay within it. The verse shows the way immediately after the restriction.

And the addressee of the command is worth noting: ankiḥū — a plural imperative. The address is not to the individual but to the community. It is not said to the one who wishes to marry, "marry"; it is said to the community, "marry them off".

The verse, that is, places what looks like an individual decision as a social responsibility.

The plural of أَيِّم (ayyim). The sense the lexicographers record: one who has no spouse.

And the scope of the word matters: ayyim is used both of one who has never married and of one who has lost a spouse; and both of men and of women.

The word, that is, covers not one condition but every condition of "having no spouse at present". This is a scope the lexicographers record.

And that this word is chosen is worth noting: the verse does not use al-abzār or any other narrow word; it uses the inclusive one.

This is the most striking clause in the verse, because it meets an objection in advance.

The objection is plain and is the same in every age: "he has no means." The verse does not deny it; it accepts the poverty and ties the answer to somewhere else.

فَقِير — root ف-ق-ر: its concrete sense is the vertebra (faqar). The connection the lexicographers draw: a faqīr is one whose backbone is broken — one who cannot straighten his back. The root was taken up at Fāṭir, 35/15 (antumu'l-fuqarāʾu ila'llāh).

أَغْنَىٰ — root غ-ن-ي: to be without need, to suffice. Ghanī — one who needs no one.

And the conditional structure of the sentence is worth noting: in yakūnū … yughnihim. The answer of the condition is a promise, and the agent of the promise is God.

This is the place in the verse most open to misreading, and a note must be entered:

The sentence is not a formula of guarantee. The Qurʾān's general language about provision, as has been recorded at many places in this commentary (al-ʿAnkabūt 29/17, al-Shūrā 42/27), sets up no undertaking of accounts. What the verse does is to ask that poverty not be counted an obstacle by itself.

And the qualification min faḍlih supports this: the enriching is named as coming not from a man's own account but from bounty.

I record this as my own reading; the conditional structure of the sentence and the qualification min faḍlih are the wording of the text.

وَاسِع — root و-س-ع: breadth. The same root as al-saʿa in the twenty-second verse.

And the link between the two verses is worth noting: in the twenty-second verse it was man's breadth that was named (ulu'l-faḍli minkum wa'l-saʿa); in the thirty-second, God's. The same root, ten verses apart, with two different subjects.

I record this as an observation about the word order.