al-Nisāʾ 4:32

Wa lā tatamannaw mā faḍḍala'llāhu bihī baʿḍakum ʿalā baʿḍ, li'l-rijāli naṣībun mimma'ktasabū wa li'l-nisāʾi naṣībun mimma'ktasabna, wa'sʾalu'llāha min faḍlih, inna'llāha kāna bi-kulli shayʾin ʿAlīmā

"Do not covet that by which God has favoured some of you over others. To the men belongs a share of what they have earned, and to the women belongs a share of what they have earned. Ask God of His bounty. God knows all things."

This verse uses the same words as the thirty-fourth, which will come two verses later. And this is a datum of the text that is most often skipped in exegesis. It must be established first, because the thirty-fourth verse comes on top of this one.

In both sentences there is the same verb (faḍḍala), the same structure (baʿḍ … ʿalā baʿḍ) and the same indefiniteness.

And the indefiniteness itself is a datum of the text, which I record separately: both verses say baʿḍakum ʿalā baʿḍ / baʿḍahum ʿalā baʿḍ — "some of you over others" / "some of them over others". In neither of the two verses does the expression "men over women" occur. This is a countable fact: both the subject and the object of the sentence are indefinite pronouns.

I record this as an observation about word order, not as an exegetical preference. How this indefiniteness is read in the thirty-fourth verse will be given there, in a table of the disagreement.

The two clauses in the middle of the verse are exact copies of each other:

In all three rows the word is the same; the only thing that changes is the person-ending of the verb. Iktasabū — third person plural masculine; iktasabna — third person plural feminine. The sentence, that is, builds the same word twice, changing only the inflection.

And this happens for the second time in the sūra. The seventh verse did the same thing:

Li'l-rijāli naṣībun mimmā taraka'l-wālidāni wa'l-aqrabūn wa li'l-nisāʾi naṣībun mimmā taraka'l-wālidāni wa'l-aqrabūn (4/7)

In both verses there is the same word (naṣīb), the same paired construction and the same symmetry. This is a repetition that can be verified within the sūra.

And now comes the most striking side of this verse.

The root كسب: to obtain something, to earn it; and the concrete association the lexicographers record is going after a task and getting it.

The classical lexicographers have a record about Form VIII (iktasaba): it is said that between kasaba and iktasaba the second states greater effort and intent. I relate this record as the lexicographers give it; there is no complete agreement on the distinction.

What belongs here is this, and it is a datum of the text: the verse uses the verb iktasaba for both parties.

The sentence could have been built like this, but it is not:

The verse, that is, establishes by repeating the word that both parties are in the position of the one who earns. The verb is not passive but active; and active twice over.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the inflection of the verb: iktasabna is the feminine form and it stands once in the sentence, exactly in the place of its masculine counterpart. The text writes the woman's earning not as an extension of the man's earning but as an item in its own right.

And a limiting record: no legal arrangement and no theory of property is drawn from here. What is said is the sentence's own structure: the same verb and the same noun are given to both parties.

The verse forbids one thing and puts something else in its place. The two must be set side by side:

تَمَنِّي — root م-ن-ي: to let a thing pass through the heart, to picture it. From the same root comes amāniyy (vain fancies), and this word will return in the hundred and nineteenth verse of the sūra.

And the distinction must be recorded: what is forbidden is not asking but wanting what another has. The second half of the sentence commands asking outright.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the presence of the two verbs in the same verse: the verse closes off comparison and leaves asking open.

One. The verse describes comparison itself as a burden: a desire built by looking at what another has is named in the verse tamannī and is forbidden. What is put in its place is not the asking itself but the direction of the asking.

Two. That the word naṣīb is given twice, to both parties, continues the line established in the sūra's seventh verse. The sūra counts the party who has a share twice — and each time the second counting is identical to the first.