al-Nisāʾ 4:26-28

Yurīdu'llāhu li-yubayyina lakum wa yahdiyakum sunana'lladhīna min qablikum wa yatūba ʿalaykum, wa'llāhu ʿAlīmun Ḥakīm · Wa'llāhu yurīdu an yatūba ʿalaykum wa yurīdu'lladhīna yattabiʿūna'l-shahawāti an tamīlū maylan ʿaẓīmā · Yurīdu'llāhu an yukhaffifa ʿankum wa khuliqa'l-insānu ḍaʿīfā

"God wishes to make things clear to you, to show you the ways of those before you, and to accept your repentance. God is Knowing, Wise. God wishes to accept your repentance; but those who follow their desires wish you to swerve utterly away. God wishes to lighten your burden. Man was created weak."

In these three verses the verb يُرِيدُ occurs four times, three of them ascribed to God and one to the other party. This is a countable fact.

And the structure itself carries information, which I record as my own reading: after the rulings, what the will that lays them down wants is stated. The verse, that is, explains the intention behind a list of prohibitions running to twenty-three items.

سُنَّة — root س-ن-ن: to do something evenly and smoothly; to open a way. Sanna'l-māʾa — he made the water flow; masnūn — evenly shaped.

The word is plural here: sunan — ways. And the expression "the ways of those before you" states that the rulings have a continuity within history.

The concept of sunnat Allāh was treated in al-Fatḥ, and a record was entered there: "the concept is a measure for understanding the past, not a warrant for judging the present." I keep that record here too.

The sentence reinforces the verb an tamīlū (that you swerve) with maylan ʿaẓīmā (a great swerving).

And the word's second occurrence in the sūra must be recorded: the same root will return in the hundred and twenty-ninth verse — fa-lā tamīlū kulla'l-mayl ("do not incline wholly to one side").

The same root, at two different scales. This is a repetition that can be verified within the sūra.

"Man was created weak."

And where this sentence is spoken must be recorded: as the ground of the will to lighten. Weakness, that is, is not named as a defect; it is named as the reason for the lightening of the ruling.

The root ض-ع-ف had occurred in this sūra at the ninth verse (dhurriyyatan ḍiʿāfan) and at the seventy-fifth (al-mustaḍʿafīn).

Now the root returns in a third place and in its most general form: khuliqa'l-insānu ḍaʿīfā.

Read together, the three rows show the three layers the sūra builds around weakness: a state, a nature, and a wrong done.

I record this as my own reading; the places of the words can be counted in the text.

And this is an important place for this sūra: the sūra is built on the right of the one who has no protection, and in the twenty-eighth verse it is said that being without protection belongs to everyone. Those addressed by the rulings, that is, are weak too.

One. The verses between the twenty-sixth and the twenty-eighth come immediately after a long list of prohibitions and set a frame around the list: the aim is not to restrict but to make clear and to lighten. That the intention is stated after a body of rules also determines how the rules are to be read.

Two. The sentence khuliqa'l-insānu ḍaʿīfā makes, in the middle of a text of obligations, one of the plainest admissions about human beings. This sentence produces neither an excuse nor a humiliation. It says that the measure of the burden is set according to the strength of the one who carries it.

And a limit: no conclusion such as "man is weak, and therefore not responsible" follows from here. The verse names weakness not so that responsibility should be lifted but so that it should be lightened — the verb itself is yukhaffifa, not yarfaʿa.