al-Nūr 24:64

A-lā inna li'llāhi mā fi'l-samāwāti wa'l-arḍ, qad yaʿlamu mā antum ʿalayh, wa yawma yurjaʿūna ilayhi fa-yunabbiʾuhum bimā ʿamilū, wa'llāhu bi-kulli shayʾin ʿalīm

"Know that to God belongs whatever is in the heavens and the earth. He knows what state you are in. On the day they are returned to Him, He will tell them what they did. God is knowing of all things."

The sūra closes with the word of knowing, and this agrees with its whole subject.

The root ع-ل-م occurs twice in the closing verse: qad yaʿlamu and ʿalīm.

The expression is worth noting: mā antum ʿalayh — "that which you are upon".

The verse, that is, does not say "what you have done"; it says your state. What is named is not an act but a position.

And this agrees with a way of looking repeated through the whole sūra, and I record this as my own reading:

Most of the things diagnosed through the sūra are not acts but positions and inclinations:

The sūra regulates acts too — but it sets its diagnoses upon positions.

I record this as my own reading; the places of the words stand in the text and can be counted.

نَبَّأَ — root ن-ب-أ. And this is the sūra's last surprise of vocabulary.

The root was analysed in detail at al-Ḥujurāt, 49/6; the note there: beneath the root lies the idea of coming from one place to another, of being carried; a report is what is carried. And the sentence drawn out in the Nabaʾ section: "A nabaʾ is a report upon the hearing of which something must change."

And at the sūra's close this root comes as a verb of telling: fa-yunabbiʾuhum bimā ʿamilū — "He will tell them what they did".

And this forms a ring with the sūra as a whole, and I record this as my own reading:

The sūra had been occupied with the reports people carry about one another — reports unproven, passing from tongue to tongue, supposed to be of no weight. And the sūra closes with an act of telling.

The sūra, that is, closes with a report that needs no verification the discussion it had opened with a report that could not be verified.

I record this reading as my own reading; the roots of the two expressions and their places stand in the text.

The same verse-ending occurred at the end of the thirty-fifth verse too — the verse of the likeness of light.

The sūra's central verse and its last verse end with the same sentence.

I record this as an observation about the word order; the sameness of the two verse-endings stands in the text and can be verified.