حمٓ · تَنزِيلُ ٱلْكِتَٰبِ مِنَ ٱللَّهِ ٱلْعَزِيزِ ٱلْعَلِيمِ · غَافِرِ ٱلذَّنۢبِ وَقَابِلِ ٱلتَّوْبِ شَدِيدِ ٱلْعِقَابِ ذِى ٱلطَّوْلِ لَآ إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا هُوَ إِلَيْهِ ٱلْمَصِيرُ
Ḥā-mīm · Tanzīlu'l-kitābi mina'llāhi'l-ʿazīzi'l-ʿalīm · Ghāfiri'dh-dhanbi wa qābili't-tawbi shadīdi'l-ʿiqābi dhi'ṭ-ṭawl · Lā ilāha illā hū · Ilayhi'l-maṣīr
"Ḥā-mīm. The sending down of this Book is from God, the Mighty, the Knowing: the forgiver of sin, the accepter of repentance, severe in punishment, the possessor of bounty. There is no god but He; to Him is the journey's end."
| Order | Attribute | What it states |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ghāfiri'dh-dhanb | Forgiveness |
| 2 | Qābili't-tawb | Acceptance of the return |
| 3 | Shadīdi'l-ʿiqāb | The severity of the punishment |
| 4 | Dhi'ṭ-ṭawl | Bounty, breadth of means |
| 5 | Lā ilāha illā hū | Oneness |
The third attribute stands after two attributes of mercy and before an attribute of bounty — that is, in the middle. This is a placement that can be verified.
I record this as my own reading: this is a sūra that will take dispute as its subject, and in its very first verses it leaves both sides open. Neither forgiveness alone nor punishment alone is named; the two are given in a single breath, and the last of them is an attribute that states breadth.
غَافِر and قَابِل — both are active participles, that is, they state not an act but an attribute. Not a one-off deed but a continuing state.
ٱلتَّوْب — the verbal-noun form of tawba. Root ت-و-ب: to turn, to come back. What is accepted is named not a feeling of remorse but a return.
Root ط-و-ل: length. The root has occurred in al-Muzzammil and al-Ḥadīd.
The lexicographers dwell on what the word amounts to in this construct: ṭawl means breadth of means, the power to do a thing, the surplus one has in hand. The lexicographers explain it by the picture of "having a long arm" — close to the English idiom "open-handed".
I record this as an observation: the attribute states not the thing given but the breadth of the capacity to give. And it has been placed immediately after the attribute "severe in punishment".