al-Aḥzāb 33:69

Yā ayyuha'lladhīna āmanū lā takūnū ka'lladhīna ādhaw Mūsā fa-barraʾahu'llāhu mimmā qālū, wa kāna ʿinda'llāhi wajīhā

"O you who believe! Do not be like those who injured Moses. God cleared him of what they said. And he was of high standing with God."

The root أ-ذ-ي occurs in this verse for the seventh and last time.

And the sūra closes the root by tying it to a past example. In the forty-eighth verse the Prophet had been told "pay no heed to their injury"; in the fifty-third the discomfort given unawares was recorded; in the fifty-seventh and fifty-eighth a ruling was issued; in the fifty-ninth a precaution was proposed.

The sixty-ninth verse adds a dimension of history to the matter: this is nothing new.

I record this as my own reading; its ground is the distribution of the root in the sūra.

The verse does not give what it was that was said. It says only that there was something said and that God cleared him of it.

This is a datum of the text and must be recorded. Various narratives are transmitted about this in classical exegesis; I do not enter into them, because the wording of the verse gives no content and the reports differ at the level of detail.

And there is one further reason for this: the function of the verse lies not in the content of the event but in its structure. The verse does not say "such-and-such a slander was made"; it says "something was said and God cleared him of it". The structure works independently of the content.

And a link must be made with the preceding section: the fifty-eighth verse had named injury over something not done buhtān. The sixty-ninth verse gives an instance of the same structure in history.

To be free or quit of a thing, to slip clear, to be delivered. Barāʾa — distance, being clear of liability. This root was treated at al-Mumtaḥana (buraʾāʾ — 60/4).

And another branch of the root: bāriʾ — the maker (treated at al-Ḥashr). The lexicographers join the two branches on the common ground of "one thing's being separated from another".

The pattern: Form II (barraʾa) — it conveys intensity and completeness: "he cleared him entirely".

And the primary sense of the root is the face: wajh. Wajīh — one who has a face, one held in esteem, honoured; one whose face is clear before a community.

And the choice of this word sets up a contrast with the preceding verse, and this is a fact of word order that must be recorded:

The same root, three verses apart, in two opposite states. One the turning about of the face, the other the honour of the face.

I record this as my own reading; its ground is that the two words are from the same root.

And the Qurʾān uses this word once more: "The Messiah, Jesus son of Mary… of high standing (wajīh) in this world and in the hereafter" (Āl ʿImrān 3/45).

The verse gives a command: lā takūnū ka'lladhīna… — "do not be like them."

And the form of the command is worth recording: the verse does not forbid a behaviour; it forbids resembling a position.

The difference is this: forbidding a behaviour requires that the behaviour be recognisable. Asking that one not resemble a position requires that the person compare his own situation with an example.

And comparison is harder, because a person generally does not call what he himself does by the name of that example.

And the last sentence of the verse lays down a measure: wa kāna ʿinda'llāhi wajīhā. That is, what was said did not change the worth of the one it was said about.

This agrees exactly with the founding principle of the sūra: the fourth verse said that speech does not change reality. The sixty-ninth verse repeats the same principle for slander.

Slander too is a piece of speech, and it too stays in the mouth. I record this as my own reading; its ground is that the two verses set up the same structure (speech / reality).