Yāsīn 36:65

Al-yawma nakhtimu ʿalā afwāhihim wa tukallimunā aydīhim wa tashhadu arjuluhum bimā kānū yaksibūn

"Today We seal their mouths. Their hands speak to Us, and their feet bear witness to what they earned."

The concrete sense of the root: to close the mouth of a vessel or of a writing with a seal. Khātam — a signet ring; khitām — the end of a thing, its closing (because the seal is pressed last of all).

The root has occurred in al-Muṭaffifīn (raḥīqin makhtūm) and in al-Shūrā and al-Munāfiqūn.

And the picture in the root here must be recorded: a seal does not merely close something, it is pressed in order to certify that it has remained closed. A sealed vessel is a vessel one can see has not been opened.

Word order: nakhtimu ʿalā afwāhihim — with the particle ʿalā. In Arabic khatama ʿalā announces a covering over. The same structure is used at al-Baqara 2/7 of the heart and the ear (khatama'llāhu ʿalā qulūbihim wa ʿalā samʿihim). In Yāsīn the place sealed is al-afwāh — the mouths.

In Fuṣṣilat at 41/20-21 the witness of the limbs was treated in detail. The findings there were these: three witnesses are counted — the ear, the eye, the skin; in third place stands not the heart but the jild, because the skin is the boundary — the face that touches the world; and their owners protest to their skins: lima shahidtum ʿalaynā, and the answer is anṭaqana'llāhu'lladhī anṭaqa kulla shayʾ.

Yāsīn recounts the same scene but parts from it at three points. A comparison table — every row can be verified from the two texts:

Three differences must be recorded in particular.

First and most decisive: the mouth.

In Fuṣṣilat the mouth is free — indeed its owners speak and protest to their skins. In Yāsīn the mouth is sealed and there is no protest.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the difference between the two texts: the sealing of the mouth is not the removal of the defence — it is the removal of the telling. The mouth is the organ with which a person gives an account of what he has done; the hand and the foot are the organs that do it. Yāsīn silences the one that tells and makes the one that does speak.

Second: two different verbs.

Yāsīn says tukallimu (speak) of the hands and tashhadu (bear witness) of the feet. The two verbs could have been the same; they are not.

My own reading: the hand is the organ that works, the foot the organ that carries. The hand can tell what was done — hence "it speaks". The foot bears witness only to where one was — hence "it bears witness". I give this distinction as a reading; its ground is that two separate verbs have been chosen.

Third: the addressee.

Tukallimu-nā — the hands speak "to Us". Not to their owner.

This is a verifiable datum of word order and must be recorded: the limb does not join its owner's defence; it gives its statement to another addressee. In Fuṣṣilat there was a conversation between the skins and their owners (qālū li-julūdihim); in Yāsīn there is no such conversation.

The same scene is recounted in a third place in the Qurʾān, with a third list:

All three lists are verifiable textual data. And in al-Nūr the tongue is among the witnesses — that is, the area sealed in Yāsīn is there on the side that speaks.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the difference between the three lists: the lists change, and the one thing that does not change is that the witness comes from the person's own body. The variability of the lists shows that the verses are set down not to give an inventory of organs but to describe a situation: the evidence is not brought from outside.

And this agrees with the twelfth verse of the sūra: there it had been said wa naktubu mā qaddamū wa āthārahum — a record was being kept. Here the bearer of the record is the body. I give the link between the two verses as an observation.

The distinction the verse sets up — the organ that tells and the organ that does — is a distinction with a counterpart in everyday life.

The information a person gives about himself and the information his conduct gives often do not agree; and the most reliable datum about someone is usually not what he says but what he does.

The verse does not say this as a piece of moral advice; it builds it as a scene. I give this connection as my own reading and do not force it: the work of the verse is to recount a scene of the resurrection; the counterpart here follows from the logic of the scene itself.