إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ عِندَهُۥ عِلْمُ ٱلسَّاعَةِ وَيُنَزِّلُ ٱلْغَيْثَ وَيَعْلَمُ مَا فِى ٱلْأَرْحَامِ وَمَا تَدْرِى نَفْسٌ مَّاذَا تَكْسِبُ غَدًا وَمَا تَدْرِى نَفْسٌۢ بِأَىِّ أَرْضٍ تَمُوتُ
"The knowledge of the Hour is with God. He sends down the rain, and He knows what is in the wombs. No one knows what he will earn tomorrow; no one knows in what land he will die."
| Order | Expression | Form |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | ʿIndahu ʿilmu's-sāʿa | A nominal sentence — the knowledge is with Him |
| 2 | Wa yunazzilu'l-ghayth | A verb — He sends down |
| 3 | Wa yaʿlamu mā fi'l-arḥām | A verb — He knows |
| 4 | Wa mā tadrī nafsun mādhā taksibu ghadā | A negation — no one knows |
| 5 | Wa mā tadrī nafsun bi-ayyi arḍin tamūt | A negation — no one knows |
The first three are affirmative, the last two negative. And the subject of the last two is nafs — that is, man.
I record this as an observation about the word order, and from it I draw a limit: the verse does not set up a list of the form "these five things are the unseen and nothing else can be known." What it says is that these five domains belong to God's knowledge, and that in the last two man's knowledge is absent.
One further note, per the method (Method): the existence of things that can be measured today about the sending down of rain and about formation in the womb does not contradict this verse — because the verse speaks not of measurement but of knowledge — and in the fourth and fifth items it ties the negation explicitly to man. To read this verse as a claim of scientific impossibility runs against the word order of the text itself. I record this as my own reading.
And the choice of the last two items is worth recording: mādhā taksibu ghadā (what you will earn tomorrow) and bi-ayyi arḍin tamūt (where you will die). One is the nearest future, the other the most certain end. That is, what man does not know is not the most distant thing — it is the nearest.