Yāsīn 36:79

Qul yuḥyīha'lladhī anshaʾahā awwala marratin, wa huwa bi-kulli khalqin ʿalīm

"Say: 'The One who brought them into being the first time will give them life. He knows every act of creation.'"

A point of word order, and it must be recorded: the answer is not given directly. The Prophet is commanded: qul — "say".

It is not he who produces the answer; he is the one who conveys it. And this agrees with the seventeenth verse of the sūra: there the messengers had said wa mā ʿalaynā illa'l-balāghu'l-mubīn. The same limit is kept for the Prophet too at the end of the sūra. I record this link as an observation.

The question was: man yuḥyi'l-ʿiẓāma — "who will give life to the bones?" The answer is: yuḥyīhā'lladhī anshaʾahā — "the One who … will give them life."

The answer takes the verb of the question exactly as it stands and fills in only its subject.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the verb the two sentences share: the question had been built as a claim of impossibility (man — "who could do it?"), but in its wording it is a question about an agent. The answer follows the wording: it states the agent. The answer, that is, does not argue with the objection — it answers its question.

And the agent of the answer is given not with a name but with a relative clause: alladhī anshaʾahā awwala marratin — "the One who brought them into being the first time."

The root was analysed in detail in al-Wāqiʿa, and, as was recorded there, in al-Wāqiʿa the root occurred four times: the bringing into being of the spouses in the garden (35), the bringing of man into being again (61), the first bringing forth (62), and the bringing forth of the tree of the fire (72). I do not repeat it here.

The core of the root: to begin a thing from nothing and raise it, grow it, little by little. Nashaʾa — he grew, he was brought up; nāshiʾ — a growing youth. The word announces, that is, not a single act but a beginning and a developing.

And the choice of word is worth recording: the verse does not say khalaqahā (created them), it says anshaʾahā (brought them into being). My own reading: the objection rested on rotting, that is, on a dissolution. The answer chooses the word that announces the act of building. Against what dissolves is set the name of the one who builds.

And now it is necessary to record what the proof does not say.

The verse does not say "repeating is easier". Such a sentence is found elsewhere in the Qurʾān (at al-Rūm 30/27 there occurs wa huwa ahwanu ʿalayh), but it is not here.

The verse says only this: the same agent.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the wording of the sentence: the proof is not a comparison of power but an identification. The objector says "this thing cannot be done"; the answer says "this thing has already been done once, and here is the name of the one who did it." The question of ease is never opened at all — because the moment it is opened, the party measuring the work would be the human being.

Two readings are transmitted for what the word خَلْق is here:

Both are transmitted; I do not impose a preference.

ٱلْعَلِيم — ʿalīm occurs three times in the sūra, and the table was given in the discussion of 36/38: 38 (al-ʿAzīzu'l-ʿAlīm), 79 (bi-kulli khalqin ʿalīm), 81 (al-Khallāqu'l-ʿAlīm). Two of the three occurrences are in the closing section, and both are in the discussion of creation.

And the work of the sentence must be recorded: the objection contained the assumption that a thing scattered and mixed cannot be told apart. The sentence answers that assumption: knowing does not disappear with scattering.