ٱلَّذِى خَلَقَنِى فَهُوَ يَهْدِينِ · وَٱلَّذِى هُوَ يُطْعِمُنِى وَيَسْقِينِ · وَإِذَا مَرِضْتُ فَهُوَ يَشْفِينِ · وَٱلَّذِى يُمِيتُنِى ثُمَّ يُحْيِينِ · وَٱلَّذِىٓ أَطْمَعُ أَن يَغْفِرَ لِى خَطِيٓـَٔتِى يَوْمَ ٱلدِّينِ
Alladhī khalaqanī fa-huwa yahdīn · Wa'lladhī huwa yuṭʿimunī wa yasqīn · Wa idhā mariḍtu fa-huwa yashfīn · Wa'lladhī yumītunī thumma yuḥyīn · Wa'lladhī aṭmaʿu an yaghfira lī khaṭīʾatī yawma'd-dīn
"It is He who created me, and He guides me. · It is He who feeds me and gives me drink. · When I fall ill, it is He who heals me. · It is He who will cause me to die and then bring me to life. · And it is He whose forgiveness of my fault on the Day of Judgement I hope for."
The five densest verses of the sūra. Very short sentences, a single subject, five fields of action, and from beginning to end a single sound: ‑īn.
Five sentences rest on the same mould, but the mould is not fixed. The differences are in the table, and all of them are read off the text:
| # | Verse | Conjunction + relative | The separating pronoun huwa | Verb(s) | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 78 | (no wāw) — alladhī | fa-huwa yahdīn | khalaqa (perfect) + yahdī (imperfect) | Past + present |
| 2 | 79 | wa'lladhī | huwa yuṭʿimunī | yuṭʿimu + yasqī (two imperfects) | Present |
| 3 | 80 | (no relative) — wa idhā | fa-huwa yashfīn | mariḍtu (perfect, first person) + yashfī | Condition + result |
| 4 | 81 | wa'lladhī | none | yumītu + yuḥyī | Future |
| 5 | 82 | wa'lladhī | none | aṭmaʿu (first person) + yaghfira | The hereafter |
One — in the first sentence there is no wāw. The sequence begins alladhī khalaqanī; the following four are joined with wa'lladhī. The first sentence is therefore not a member of the sequence but its head. It stands as a direct attribute of rabba'l-ʿālamīn in the seventy-seventh verse.
Two — in the third sentence there is no relative pronoun. The other four are built with alladhī ("the one who"); the third with wa idhā mariḍtu ("when I fall ill"). The mould breaks in the middle of the sequence.
Three — the separating pronoun (huwa) is present in the first three sentences and absent in the last two.
Four — a first-person verb occurs in only two places: mariḍtu (80) and aṭmaʿu (82). The subject of every other verb is God; the subject of these two is Abraham.
| # | Field | Axis of time |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Creation and guidance | The beginning |
| 2 | Eating and drinking | Daily life |
| 3 | Illness and healing | The breakdown of life |
| 4 | Death and resurrection | The end and what follows |
| 5 | Forgiveness | The reckoning |
And the sequence has a widening circle: the first sentence takes existence as its subject, the second the body, the third the body's failing, the fourth the body's ending, the fifth what comes after the body.
I record this as an observation: the sequence is not a list of doctrines; it is a person recounting his own life in order. And this explains why the sentences are so concrete — there is no abstract attribute, all of them are verbs.
And the fāʾ between them must be recorded. Fāʾ al-sababiyya — the fāʾ that announces cause: "He created me, and for that reason He guides me." Guidance, that is, is presented as the continuation of creation: the one who creates does not leave what he created without a way.
The same link is made elsewhere in the Qurʾān: alladhī aʿṭā kulla shayʾin khalqahu thumma hadā (Ṭāhā 20/50) — "who gave everything its creation, then guided". In both verses the order is the same: first creation, then the way.
And at al-Zukhruf 43/26-27 a similar sentence occurs in Abraham's mouth: illā'lladhī faṭaranī fa-innahu sa-yahdīn — "except the one who originated me; He will guide me". The difference between the two verses is one letter:
| Sūra | Expression | Mood |
|---|---|---|
| Al-Zukhruf 43/27 | Fa-innahu sa-yahdīn | Sīn — future |
| Al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/78 | Fa-huwa yahdīn | Imperfect — continuance |
This is a difference that can be verified from the text. And as my own reading I record this: in al-Zukhruf the sentence stands inside a declaration of separation from father and people, and with the future it announces a confidence; in al-Shuʿarāʾ the sentence stands at the head of a sequence of description and announces continuance. Two contexts require two moods. This is an explanation; it is not binding.
And the verb yahdīn ties to the sixty-second verse of the sūra: at the seashore Moses had said inna maʿiya rabbī sa-yahdīn. The same verb, the same pattern, two prophets. The difference: Moses with the sīn (the near future), Abraham with fa-huwa (continuance). This is an overlap that can be verified from the text.
And the position of the separating pronoun changes. In the first sentence it was fa-huwa (before the verb, with the fāʾ); here it is huwa directly. In Arabic this pronoun (ḍamīr al-faṣl) announces restriction: "the one who feeds is He alone."
The concreteness of the words must be recorded: the verse does not say "He provides" (yarzuqu). It says "He feeds and He gives to drink." Provision is an abstract concept; feeding and giving to drink are two acts of the hand.
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the choice of words: the whole sequence is built on this concreteness. Abraham had told his people that the idols do not hear (72); now he describes his own Lord by the most everyday of acts. The comparison is made not through attributes but through verbs.
The middle of the sequence, the sequence's one break, and the real subject of this commentary in this section.
| Difference | The other four sentences | The third sentence |
|---|---|---|
| Construction | (wa)'lladhī — a relative | wa idhā — a conditional particle |
| Subject of the verb | God | I — mariḍtu |
| Time | Continuance or future | Condition and answer |
And the main note is this: at one single place in the sequence the pronoun shifts to the first person, and it does so precisely in the sentence about illness.
- khalaqa-nī — He created me
- yuṭʿimu-nī, yasqī-n — He feeds me, gives me drink
- yumītu-nī, yuḥyī-n — He causes me to die, brings me to life
- yaghfira lī — He forgives me
Throughout the sequence, then, God is the agent and Abraham the object. In one verb alone Abraham becomes the agent — and that verb is illness.
The first ground — that the mould has been broken deliberately. The sequence could have been built as wa'lladhī yumriḍunī fa-huwa yashfīn ("it is He who makes me ill and heals me"); the mould allowed for it, and the sentence about death and life (81) is in exactly this mould: yumītunī thumma yuḥyīn. The sūra, that is, uses the same double-verb mould one verse later. It does not use it in the sentence about illness.
The second ground — that death and illness are handled separately. In the fourth sentence death is attributed directly to God: yumītunī. The text, that is, does not avoid attributing an act that appears negative (causing death). The difference in the sentence about illness cannot therefore be explained by a general rule such as "what is unpleasant is not attributed" — because one verse later death is attributed.
The third ground — the human-facing side of the causes of illness. Illness, unlike death, passes through a person's acts, his negligence, his surroundings and his choices. Death comes to everyone and comes of necessity; illness is a breakdown, and in the chain of causes of a breakdown the person too is present.
On these three grounds my own reading is this, and it is not binding: the sentence leaves illness to the person's own share and healing to God. It is not an attribution of fault but an attribution of cause — the sentence "I fell ill" is not a confession of sin but a note of which side the event came from.
| What the verse does not say | Why it does not say it |
|---|---|
| "Illness comes from a person's sin" | Sin does not occur in the verse; the verb mariḍtu is neutral |
| "God does not give illness" | The verse does not deny the attribution, it merely does not make it |
| "Healing comes only by prayer" | The verse says nothing of secondary causes |
The explanations transmitted for this verse in the classical commentaries look in the same direction, and I give them in a table:
| Explanation | Ground | Its weak side |
|---|---|---|
| What is unpleasant is not attributed to God, out of propriety | There are similar instances in the Qurʾān: the speech of the jinn, wa annā lā nadrī a-sharrun urīda bi-man fi'l-arḍi am arāda bihim rabbuhum rashadā (al-Jinn 72/10 — for the evil no agent is named, for the good one is); this was treated in al-Jinn | One verse later there is the attribution yumītunī (He causes me to die); death too is unpleasant |
| The cause belongs to the person, the outcome to God | Illness comes by causes, healing is beyond the causes | The verse says nothing of causes |
| Because the sentence is in the conditional mould, the verb is necessarily first person | The idhā condition announces a state; there is no other way of saying "when I fall ill" | The mould itself was chosen; alladhī yumriḍunī could also have been said |
The three explanations do not exclude one another. And the third completes the first and the second: the mould was chosen, and the chosen mould changed the attribution.
The root م-ر-ض: the breakdown of soundness, departure from the mean. The lexicographers describe the root as "a defect and weakness occurring in the body or in one's affairs". The Qurʾān uses the same root of the heart as well: fī qulūbihim maraḍun (al-Baqara 2/10). The word, then, does not belong to the body alone.
The root ش-ف-ي: the core the lexicographers give is to come to the edge, the outermost point of a thing (shafā — edge; shafa — lip). Shifāʾ is to come to the edge of an illness, to come out of it. Healing, then, is not the annihilation of the illness but the reaching of its boundary.
And the mould fa-huwa yashfīn must be recorded: it is exactly the same construction as fa-huwa yahdīn in the first sentence. The fāʾ of cause is at work here too: "I fell ill, and therefore He heals."
ثُمَّ — in Arabic it announces sequence with an interval (tarākhī); fāʾ is for succession without interval, thumma for succession with time in between. That there is a distance between death and resurrection is thus in the particle itself.
And the separating pronoun is absent here. The first three sentences had huwa; here and in the fifth it is absent. I record this as an observation about the structure and propose an explanation, which is not binding: the first three sentences are works seen in this world, and there the emphasis "He alone" answers a dispute — because feeding, giving drink and healing can look as though they have other agents. On death and resurrection, however, there is no rival claim to agency to begin with.
And the same pair occurs once more in Abraham's mouth in the Qurʾān: rabbiya'lladhī yuḥyī wa yumīt (al-Baqara 2/258) — and there the answer of the one addressed is anā uḥyī wa umīt. There, that is, a rival claim exists; here it does not. This is a difference that can be verified from the text.
In four sentences the verbs were declarative: He creates, He feeds, He heals, He causes to die. In the fifth there is a verb of hope: aṭmaʿu — "I hope".
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the verb itself: Abraham does not state forgiveness as a right or a certainty. The one uncertain sentence in the sequence is the one concerning his own end.
The root ط-م-ع was analysed in the fifty-first verse and compared there with the sentence of the sorcerers; I do not repeat it. The table there showed this: the two sentences are almost exactly the same, their only difference being singular and plural.
خَطِيٓـَٔة — root خ-ط-ء: to miss the target, to fail to hit. Its opposite is ṣawāb (hitting the mark). In the core of the word there is no intent; for what is intentional ithm or dhanb is used.
And a point of word order: the word is singular — khaṭīʾatī, "my fault". Not the plural (khaṭāyā). The sorcerers had used the plural: khaṭāyānā (51).
The transmitted explanation: the singular announces the class — "whatever fault of mine there may be". I make no firm choice.
يَوْمَ ٱلدِّين — "the day of dīn", that is, the day of reckoning. The root د-ي-ن was analysed in al-Fātiḥa (māliki yawmi'd-dīn) and I do not repeat it. The note there: in the core of the root lie debt, requital and submission; dayn (debt) and dīn (religion) are from the same root.
What the five sentences have in common is that not one of them contains an attribute. Abraham does not describe his Lord as "great", "powerful" or "wise". All five of the five sentences are verbal sentences.
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the seventy-second verse: Abraham had asked his people what the idols do — do they hear, do they benefit, do they harm. He had asked about three verbs. Now he recounts his own side with verbs too: He creates, He guides, He feeds, He gives drink, He heals, He causes to die, He brings to life, He forgives. Eight verbs.
The most concrete side of the sequence is the space the sentence about illness leaves open. The verse does not tie illness to a punishment; nor does it place healing outside the order of causes. It stands away from both extremes: neither "what befell you is from your guilt" nor "taking hold of the means is unnecessary".
What the sentence leaves is where responsibility and surrender part: a person takes on his own share, he does not take on the outcome. And this is the same measure as in the third verse of the sūra — the messenger was told "do not grieve", because it was not he who produced the outcome.