هُوَ ٱلَّذِى يُحْىِۦ وَيُمِيتُ فَإِذَا قَضَىٰٓ أَمْرًا فَإِنَّمَا يَقُولُ لَهُۥ كُن فَيَكُونُ
"It is He who gives life and gives death. When He decrees a matter, He only says to it 'Be', and it is."
كُن فَيَكُون — this construct occurs in many places in the Qurʾān and was treated at al-Baqara 2/117. I do not repeat it here; the note made there was this: the expression is not a description of speech but a way of stating that no intermediary comes in between.
What belongs here is the placing of the verse. The preceding verse (67) had counted the six stages of the human being: earth, a drop, ʿalaqa, an infant, the age of full strength, old age — and all of them were joined with thumma, that is, with intervals.
The sixty-eighth verse comes immediately after this and leaves no interval at all: fa-innamā yaqūlu lahū kun fa-yakūn — two verbs, and between them a fāʾ.
| Verse | Connective | What it states |
|---|---|---|
| 67 | Thumma (five times) | With intervals — the forming of the human being is spread over time |
| 68 | Fāʾ | Without interval — no distance between the decree and the coming to be |
That is, immediately after describing the slow construction of the human being, the sūra says that the decree on which that construction depends is instantaneous. Time is on the side of what comes to be.