al-Shūrā 42:27

Wa law basaṭa'llāhu'r-rizqa li-ʿibādihi la-baghaw fi'l-arḍ; wa lākin yunazzilu bi-qadarin mā yashāʾ; innahu bi-ʿibādihi khabīrun baṣīr

"Had God spread out provision (without limit) for His servants, they would have overstepped on the earth. But He sends down by a measure what He wills. He is aware of His servants and sees them."

The root was treated in Nūḥ: to spread, to lay out, to open, to widen; bisāṭ — a rug spread on the ground; its opposite qabḍ.

And in the twelfth verse the same root occurred as yabsuṭu. The difference between the two verses was tabulated above; I repeat it here because the right understanding of the verse depends on it:

Law conveys an unfulfilled condition. The verse, that is, speaks not of something that has happened but of a possibility that has not. This is the same as the finding recorded for the same pattern in al-Wāqiʿa at 56/65: law nashāʾu — "had We willed" — an unfulfilled condition.

The root baghy was treated at the fourteenth verse and grounded on al-Ḥujurāt 49/9: wanting in its boundary-crossing state.

And here the logic of the root works exactly:

Baghy is a word that passes from "to want" to "to overstep". Provision's being spread without limit removes the material bound that stands before wanting. Once the bound is gone, nothing is left to limit the wanting itself.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the semantic transition of the root: the verse does not say that the human being is evil; it says that wanting does not limit itself. The bound comes from outside.

Qadar — root ق-د-ر. It was treated in detail in al-Qadr in its three senses:

And in al-Qamar at 54/49 (innā kulla shayʾin khalaqnāhu bi-qadar) the same pattern — bi-qadar — was treated. The note there was this: in al-Qamar the root is distributed over two different words — bi-qadar carries the branch of measure, muqtadir the branch of power; and this makes it easier to read the forty-ninth verse independently of the debate about divine decree.

In al-Shūrā there is the same separation, and I record it:

The sūra, that is, has given the three branches of the root to three different words. This is a fact that can be verified from the text and has the same structure as the distribution in al-Qamar.

Bi-qadar here is in the same sense as in al-Qamar 54/49: measure, quantity. And as recorded in al-Qamar, this commentary does not enter into the theological debate about divine decree; it looks at what the word says.

Yunazzilu — Form II, tafʿīl. As recorded in al-Ḥadīd at 57/9, this form conveys sending down piece by piece, repeatedly. The measure, that is, is not only in the quantity but in the time as well: not all at once, but at intervals.

The verse closes with two names, both of them words of knowing; but from different sides:

The two coming together covers both sides of knowledge: the seen and the unseen.

And its placement must be recorded: the verse spoke of a restriction (provision comes down limited). Immediately after the restriction, it is said that the one who restricts knows His servants.

This is a repetition of the pattern recorded at the eleventh verse: a name that draws near is set after a sentence that puts at a distance. And the name baṣīr occurs twice in the sūra, in both places in this position — 11 and 27. This is a verifiable fact.

The following conclusion cannot be drawn from this verse: "since poverty is a protection, there is no need to try to better anyone's condition."

This inference is not supported by the text, for three reasons:

1. The subject of the verse is not one person's provision but the total. Li-ʿibādihi — "for His servants", plural and general. The verse speaks of the absence of a limitless spreading; it does not explain any one person's straitness. 2. The Qurʾān at the same time commands the seeking of provision: "…disperse in the land and seek of God's bounty" (al-Jumuʿa 62/10) — treated in al-Jumuʿa. With the same root (ب-غ-ي, ibtighāʾ), and there in a positive sense. 3. The sūra itself commands spending (38): wa mimmā razaqnāhum yunfiqūn. A text cannot both command sharing and defend straitness.

What is to be recorded is this: the verse states that there is a measure; it issues no verdict about where the measure lies for any individual. And the word baghy is a warning — whom it is aimed at is not stated in the verse; it covers everyone whose means increase.

The verse's finding rests on a testable human observation: an increase in means brings an increase in wanting; and wanting does not, together with the means, satisfy itself.

This is said not as a rule of morals but as a working. And the word itself carries it: baghy, at its root, is "to want". The problem, that is, is not wanting; it is that wanting does not carry its own bound.

What carries the bound is, according to the verse, outside: bi-qadar. And this is the first instance of the balance that will be set up in the fortieth verse of the sūra — there too a right will be granted, but by measure: sayyiʾatun mithluhā.