Ṣād 38:27-28

Wa mā khalaqna'l-samāʾa wa'l-arḍa wa mā baynahumā bāṭilā, dhālika ẓannu'lladhīna kafarū, fa-waylun li'lladhīna kafarū mina'n-nār · Am najʿalu'lladhīna āmanū wa ʿamilu'ṣ-ṣāliḥāti ka'l-mufsidīna fi'l-arḍ, am najʿalu'l-muttaqīna ka'l-fujjār

"We did not create the heaven and the earth and what is between them in vain. That is the supposition of those who disbelieve. So woe to those who disbelieve, from the Fire! Or shall We treat those who believe and do righteous deeds like those who work corruption in the earth? Or shall We treat the God-fearing like the dissolute?"

The twenty-sixth verse ended with a measure of judgment (bi'l-ḥaqq). The twenty-seventh applies the same measure to the universe.

And the transition is silent: no conjunction comes between, no sign is given that the subject has changed. The moment the account of David ends, the ground of the creation comes.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the adjacency of the two verses: immediately after the verse that requires judgment to be given among people, the sūra says that the universe too was not built without judgment. The two measures are tied to the same place.

Root ب-ط-ل. Its concrete sense: a thing's going for nothing, remaining void, yielding no result. Bāṭil — that by which one arrives nowhere. The lexicographers count the word the opposite of ḥaqq.

And the word's grammatical place here must be recorded: bāṭilan is in the accusative, and the grammarians explain this in two ways:

Both explanations are transmitted and the sense is close. I do not impose a preference.

And the qualification bi'l-ḥaqq, treated in al-Jāthiya at 45/22 and al-Aḥqāf at 46/3, comes here in its negative. I rely on that.

Set the three verses side by side and what emerges can be verified:

The same sentence-frame, in three sūras in three different forms. al-Aḥqāf adds the term, al-Jāthiya the measure, and Ṣād gives it by negating the opposite.

I record this as my own reading: the choice of the negative pattern is fitting in this sūra, because Ṣād is a sūra of objections. The other side was rejecting something; the verse answers by rejecting a rejection. And it names that rejection at once: dhālika ẓannu'lladhīna kafarū.

And this sentence completes the diagnoses of the polemical part of the sūra.

In the eighth verse it was said bal hum fī shakkin min dhikrī — doubt. Here it says ẓann.

In the eighth verse, that is, irresolution; in the twenty-seventh, a conviction. And the content of the conviction is stated: that the universe has been built in vain.

I record this as my own reading: the verse describes denial not as a lack of knowledge but as an assumption. And the subject of the assumption is not God's existence — it is whether the universe has an outcome.

And in the twenty-fourth verse the same root was used of David: wa ẓanna Dāwūdu annamā fatannāh.

The same root, three verses apart, two opposite outcomes. I record this as an observation. The word itself is neither right nor wrong; what is decisive is what it is directed at.

And the twenty-eighth verse asks the same matter in the field of morals.

Two questions come in succession, and both begin with am najʿalu. The pairs compared are different:

I record this as my own reading: the first question is framed by a measure that looks outward (what one does on the earth), the second by a measure that looks inward (how one stands). The two together take in both a person's act and his posture.

فُجَّار — root ف-ج-ر. Its concrete sense: to split a thing open, to cleave a spring so that it gushes. Infijār — a bursting forth; fajr — the light that breaks out through the darkness of the night. And from there: to break through a limit, to acknowledge no measure.

This root was treated in al-Muṭaffifīn (kitāba'l-fujjāri la-fī sijjīn), and the "splitting" picture of the root was given there. I rely on that.

مُتَّقِين — root و-ق-ي: to guard oneself, to put something between oneself and a thing. The two words are exact opposites:

This opposition is drawn from the root senses the lexicographers record, and I give it as my own reading: the two words are not randomly chosen opposites; both describe a relation to a limit, in contrary directions.

The twenty-seventh verse says the universe is not in vain. The twenty-eighth asks whether two groups will be treated alike.

And the logical link between them is direct, and I record it as my own reading:

If the two groups arrived at the same outcome, what a person does would have no outcome. And a thing that has no outcome is bāṭil — that is, the very thing the twenty-seventh verse rejects.

The second verse, that is, is not the proof of the first but its application. That the universe is not void means that the moral distinction is real.

And the same link was made in al-Jāthiya at 45/22: there too the creation's being bi'l-ḥaqq was joined with the ground that "every soul may be recompensed for what it has earned". I rely on the note there: "The ground of the distinction is given not as a desire to punish but as a qualification placed on the creating itself."