وَيَدْرَؤُا۟ عَنْهَا ٱلْعَذَابَ أَن تَشْهَدَ أَرْبَعَ شَهَٰدَٰتٍۭ بِٱللَّهِ إِنَّهُۥ لَمِنَ ٱلْكَٰذِبِينَ · وَٱلْخَٰمِسَةَ أَنَّ غَضَبَ ٱللَّهِ عَلَيْهَآ إِن كَانَ مِنَ ٱلصَّٰدِقِينَ
Wa yadraʾu ʿanha'l-ʿadhāba an tashhada arbaʿa shahādātin bi'llāhi innahū la-mina'l-kādhibīn · Wa'l-khāmisata anna ghaḍaba'llāhi ʿalayhā in kāna mina'l-ṣādiqīn
"And it averts the punishment from her that she testify four testimonies sworn by God that he is of the liars. And the fifth, that the anger of God be upon her if he is of the truthful."
Root: د-ر-أ. Its concrete sense is to push, to thrust back, to repel. Daraʾa — to push a thing away. From the same root come dirʾ (in the sense of pushing) and tadāruʾ.
The choice of the verb is worth recording. The verse does not say "the woman too swears"; it says "it pushes the punishment away from her".
The work of the woman's oath, that is, is not to prove a claim — it is to thrust back something that is coming. The verb is chosen from the field of defence.
| Party | Verb | Its direction |
|---|---|---|
| The one who charges | yarmūn (ر-م-ي) | To throw — forward |
| The one charged | yadraʾu (د-ر-أ) | To push — backward |
The two verbs run in opposite directions, and both are physical. I record this as an observation about the language; the concrete senses of the two roots stand in the dictionary.
The verse does not say which punishment it means in saying "the punishment", and this is a point debated in classical jurisprudence. That debate is not entered in this section.
What can be recorded is a linguistic observation: the word is the same word as ʿadhābahumā in the second verse. The sūra names the punishment always with the same word.
The readings al-khāmisatu (nominative) in the seventh verse and al-khāmisata (accusative) in the ninth are recorded in the sources, and this difference between the two verses is taken up in the works on the variant readings.
That the difference does not change the meaning, and consists only in a choice of case within the construction of the sentence, is recorded in the classical sources. Since I cannot state with certainty which reader read which, I write no names.
The eighth and ninth verses repeat, word for word, the structure of the sixth and seventh. Only three things change: the subject, the word of the fifth oath (laʿna / ghaḍab), and the direction of the conditional clause.
This repetition is a wholeness rarely seen in the Qurʾān's verses of ruling, and by itself it says something: the procedural position of the two parties is one and the same.
I record this as an observation about the word order; the repetition itself is the wording of the text and can be compared.