قَالُوا۟ لَا ضَيْرَ ۖ إِنَّآ إِلَىٰ رَبِّنَا مُنقَلِبُونَ · إِنَّا نَطْمَعُ أَن يَغْفِرَ لَنَا رَبُّنَا خَطَٰيَٰنَآ أَن كُنَّآ أَوَّلَ ٱلْمُؤْمِنِينَ
Qālū lā ḍayra; innā ilā rabbinā munqalibūn · Innā naṭmaʿu an yaghfira lanā rabbunā khaṭāyānā an kunnā awwala'l-muʾminīn
"They said: 'No harm! We are returning to our Lord. · We hope that our Lord will forgive us our faults, because we are the first of the believers.'"
The threat contained three things: cutting off, crucifixion, all of them. The answer begins with two words: lā ḍayra — "no harm".
| Element | Expression | Its work |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lā ḍayra | The refusal itself — the threat is not weighed |
| 2 | Innā ilā rabbinā munqalibūn | The ground — the place of arrival |
| 3 | Innā naṭmaʿu an yaghfira lanā | Hope — the reckoning of the past |
The answer is thus built in three steps: refusal, ground, hope. And the ground takes up not the content of the threat but its outcome.
And the kind of lā must be recorded: lā al-nāfiya li'l-jins — the lā that negates the whole class. In Arabic this pattern means "there is no harm whatever"; it does not say "there is a little harm" or "this harm is unimportant". The concept of harm itself is lifted away.
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the pattern: the answer does not say "we will bear the pain". It says "this is not a harm" — that is, the measure the threat rests on is rejected. Cutting off and crucifixion are a harm only if the body is the final value.
The root was analysed in al-Inshiqāq and I do not repeat it. The description there: ق-ل-ب — to turn a thing over, to bring its underside up; from the same root قَلْب (qalb, the heart) — the thing that turns most from state to state. إِنقَلَبَ (Form VII, infiʿāl) — it turned, it turned back.
One — the word will return in the last verse of the sūra. Verse two hundred and twenty-seven: wa sa-yaʿlamu'lladhīna ẓalamū ayya munqalabin yanqalibūn — "those who did wrong will soon know to what place of return they will return".
| Verse | Expression | Of whom | Tone |
|---|---|---|---|
| 50 | Innā ilā rabbinā munqalibūn | The sorcerers — of themselves | Confidence |
| 227 | Ayya munqalabin yanqalibūn | Those who do wrong — third person | Warning |
The sūra thus uses the same root at its two ends: one speaks knowing the place of return, the other does not know it. This is an overlap that can be verified from the text.
Two — the use of the active participle. Munqalibūn — not "those who will return" but "those who are returning". In Arabic the active participle can announce a state already realised or already settled. The return is therefore recounted not as an event to happen in the future but as the present position.
Three — its relative in the Qurʾān. Wa innā ilā rabbinā la-munqalibūn (al-Zukhruf 43/14) — the prayer said when mounted on a beast. That passage was treated at al-Zukhruf 43/13-14. The same sentence, in two sūras in two different scenes: one setting out on a journey, the other under threat of execution. This is an overlap that can be verified from the text, and it shows what the word announces: every movement has a point of arrival.
| Reading | Its meaning | Ground |
|---|---|---|
| The first of that assembly | The first to believe among those present | The scene is an assembly for a display; the people had gathered (39) |
| The first of Egypt | The first to believe among the people of Pharaoh | The verse sets no limit |
| The first of those outside Moses' people | The Children of Israel had already believed | It is not stated openly in the text |
I do not impose a preference. What is to be recorded is this: men who a few minutes earlier were asking Pharaoh for a wage now describe themselves as "the first of the believers" — and they say it not as a boast but as the ground of a hope of forgiveness.
The root ط-م-ع: to want something intensely, to have one's eye on it. In Arabic the word often carries a negative colouring (covetousness); here it is used for a hope that is positive.
And the same word will occur once more in the sūra — in Abraham's mouth: wa'lladhī aṭmaʿu an yaghfira lī khaṭīʾatī yawma'd-dīn (82).
| Verse | Who | Expression |
|---|---|---|
| 51 | The sorcerers | Innā naṭmaʿu an yaghfira lanā rabbunā khaṭāyānā |
| 82 | Abraham | Wa'lladhī aṭmaʿu an yaghfira lī khaṭīʾatī |
The two sentences are almost exactly the same: the same verb (ṭamaʿ), the same request (an yaghfira), the same root (خ-ط-ء). There are two differences: the sorcerers are plural (naṭmaʿu, lanā, khaṭāyānā), Abraham singular (aṭmaʿu, lī, khaṭīʾatī).
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the overlap of the two sentences: the sūra builds the prayer of a prophet and the prayer of men who were sorcerers an hour before out of the same words. It observes no difference of rank between them. This is a datum that can be verified from the text; what it means is interpretation.
What the scene records is not a change of opinion. Men who came for a wage give up, within a few minutes, the wage, the position and life itself. And in doing so their being experts in their own trade plays its part: they knew better than anyone in that assembly what the thing they saw was not.
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the thirty-seventh verse: those brought were saḥḥārin ʿalīm, that is, "knowing" sorcerers. Here knowledge becomes the cause not of resistance but of surrender.