ٱلْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ فَاطِرِ ٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتِ وَٱلْأَرْضِ جَاعِلِ ٱلْمَلَٰٓئِكَةِ رُسُلًا أُو۟لِىٓ أَجْنِحَةٍ مَّثْنَىٰ وَثُلَٰثَ وَرُبَٰعَ يَزِيدُ فِى ٱلْخَلْقِ مَا يَشَآءُ
"Praise belongs to God, the Originator of the heavens and the earth, who makes the angels messengers with wings in twos, threes and fours. He increases in creation what He wills."
The concrete sense of the root: to split, to cleave open. Faṭara'sh-shayʾa — he split it. And the lexicographers record that the root's sense of "bringing a thing forth for the first time" comes from this picture: the bud splits and the leaf comes out.
The root was treated in al-Infiṭār (idha's-samāʾu'nfaṭarat) and in al-Zumar at 39/46 (fāṭira's-samāwāti wa'l-arḍ). I do not repeat it here.
What belongs here is this: in al-Zumar the word stood inside a prayer (quli'llāhumma fāṭira's-samāwāt), here inside an act of praise. The same attribute, once in a context of asking and once in a context of praising.
The numbers are worth recording: in twos, in threes, in fours. In Arabic these patterns (mathnā, thulātha, rubāʿ) convey distribution: "two to each", and so on.
And the verse does not set these numbers down as a limit — for immediately after them comes: yazīdu fi'l-khalqi mā yashāʾ — "He increases in creation what He wills."
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the order of the sentences: the verse gives a concrete description, then says that the description has no end. That is: the number is given not as a piece of information but as a scale.
A record about the angels, per the method (Method): no description is produced beyond what the text states. The same limit had been set in al-Jinn for beings that are not seen; I rely on that treatment.
And the reason the angels are mentioned in this verse must be recorded: rusulā — messengers. That is, their attribute is given by way of a task.