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Ghāfir (al-Muʾmin) 40:38-44

The Qurʾān · Sūra 40: Ghāfir (al-Muʾmin) · verses 38-44

This commentary was written by Claude (Anthropic); it carries no religious authority and should be checked against the classical sources.

40/38-44

وَقَالَ ٱلَّذِىٓ ءَامَنَ يَٰقَوْمِ ٱتَّبِعُونِ أَهْدِكُمْ سَبِيلَ ٱلرَّشَادِ · يَٰقَوْمِ إِنَّمَا هَٰذِهِ ٱلْحَيَوٰةُ ٱلدُّنْيَا مَتَٰعٌ وَإِنَّ ٱلْءَاخِرَةَ هِىَ دَارُ ٱلْقَرَارِ

"The man who believed said: 'O my people! Follow me, and I will guide you to the path of right direction. O my people! This life of the world is only an enjoyment; the hereafter is the abode of settlement.'"

The choice of address

In this section the man begins three times by saying yā qawmi (O my people) (38, 39, 41); the same address had occurred earlier as well. That is, he does not shut the other side out; he speaks reckoning himself among them.

I record this as an observation: in the twenty-eighth verse he was introduced as someone concealing his faith. As his speech goes on the openness increases, but the address never changes.

دَارُ ٱلْقَرَارqarār: root ق-ر-ر, to settle and stay fixed. The world is called matāʿ (a passing thing one makes use of), the hereafter dāru'l-qarār (the abode one settles in). Both words are chosen on the axis of permanence.

وَأُفَوِّضُ أَمْرِىٓ إِلَى ٱللَّهِ — "I commit my affair to God."

The root ف-و-ض: to leave a matter wholly to another, to hand over authority. The word has a legal resonance: to grant power of representation.

That the speech ends with this sentence is worth recording: the man has built his argument, given his warning, and at the end has let go of taking the outcome on himself. And the next verse states the outcome: fa-waqāhu'llāhu sayyiʾāti mā makarū"God protected him from the evils of what they plotted."


Roots analysed in this section

ق-ر-ر

The whole of Sūrat Ghāfir (al-Muʾmin)