أَوَلَمْ يَرَوْا۟ إِلَى ٱلْأَرْضِ كَمْ أَنۢبَتْنَا فِيهَا مِن كُلِّ زَوْجٍ كَرِيمٍ
In the fourth verse a sign that would come down from heaven was spoken of. The seventh verse points to the sign standing on the earth.
| 26/4 | 26/7 | |
|---|---|---|
| From where | Mina's-samāʾ — from heaven | Fi'l-arḍ — on the earth |
| Its state | It does not come down (the condition is not realised) | It is already there |
| Its effect | It makes the neck bow | It requires looking |
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the sequence of the two verses: the sign that is asked for does not come, because the sign that stands is not looked at. A-wa lam yaraw — "have they not looked?"
A point of word order: the verb is lam yaraw (they did not see), but it comes with the preposition ilā: yaraw ilā al-arḍ. In Arabic raʾā takes a direct object (raʾā'sh-shayʾa — he saw the thing); when it comes with ilā, the sense of looking, of directing the gaze, comes to the front.
The verse therefore says not "did they not see?" but "did they not look?" Seeing is a passive business; it happens while the eye is open. Looking is a directed business. The difference stands in the preposition.
The root was analysed at al-Nabaʾ 78/8 (wa khalaqnākum azwājā) and at al-Zukhruf 43/12 (khalaqa'l-azwāja kullahā).
The description given there: زَوْج is not "a pair" but "one member of a pair". Anything that has a mate is called zawj. The English "pair" names two things together; the Arabic zawj names the single thing that has a mate.
Its use for plants is worth recording: the verse names plants as zawj. The Qurʾān repeats this in several places (min kulli'th-thamarāti jaʿala fīhā zawjayni'thnayn — al-Raʿd 13/3; wa anbatnā fīhā min kulli zawjin bahīj — Qāf 50/7, treated in Qāf).
That plants mate (pollination, male and female organs) is a fact known today. No claim of a scientific miracle is set up in this commentary — the use of the word in Arabic already covers everything that has a mate, and in some plants such as the date palm the distinction of male and female was something the Arab farmer knew. What is to be recorded is this: the verse names the thing it asks to be looked at not as "variety" but as "mating". I leave this as an observation about the word.
Root ك-ر-م: generosity, worth, nobility. Used of a person the word means "worthy, noble"; used of soil, "fertile"; used of a plant, "useful, fine".
The lexicographers give the core of the word as "a thing's being the good of its own kind". What is karīm is what gives more than it had to give.
And the same word will occur once more later in the sūra: wa maqāmin karīm (58) — the "noble station" taken from the people of Pharaoh. The sūra thus gives the same attribute both to what the earth gives and to what man loses. This is a repetition that can be verified from the text.