وَأَقْسَمُوا۟ بِٱللَّهِ جَهْدَ أَيْمَٰنِهِمْ لَئِن جَآءَهُمْ نَذِيرٌ لَّيَكُونُنَّ أَهْدَىٰ مِنْ إِحْدَى ٱلْأُمَمِ فَلَمَّا جَآءَهُمْ نَذِيرٌ مَّا زَادَهُمْ إِلَّا نُفُورًا
"They swore by God with the strongest of their oaths that if a warner came to them, they would be better guided than any one of the communities. But when a warner came to them, it increased them in nothing but shying away."
The verse sets a word and a piece of conduct against one another, and between them lies a single event: the coming of the warner.
| Stage | Expression |
|---|---|
| Before | La-yakūnunna ahdā min iḥda'l-umam — we shall be the most rightly guided |
| The condition | Fa-lammā jāʾahum nadhīr — the warner came |
| After | Mā zādahum illā nufūrā — the turning away increased |
جَهْدَ أَيْمَٰنِهِم — "with the strongest of their oaths". That is: the word was given in its heaviest form.
نُفُور — root ن-ف-ر: to take fright and flee. The word is used especially of an animal's taking fright. The lexicographers record this concrete sense.
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the root of the word together with the verb zādahum: the verse does not say that the warning remained without effect — it says that it took effect in the opposite direction. And the reaction is named not as a thought but as a shying away.
The like of this was recorded in the portrait treated in al-Baqara at 2/204-206: "when he is told 'fear God', his pride drives him into sin" — there too the warning increased the resistance. The two verses relate the same mechanism with two different words.