al-Shūrā 42:28

Wa huwa'lladhī yunazzilu'l-ghaytha min baʿdi mā qanaṭū wa yanshuru raḥmatah; wa huwa'l-waliyyu'l-ḥamīd

"It is He who sends down the rain after they have despaired, and spreads out His mercy. He is the Protector, the Praiseworthy."

There are many words for rain in Arabic, and each brings a different aspect forward. The particularity of the word ghayth must be recorded.

كوك غ-ي-ث: to rush to help, to come to the rescue. Ighātha — to help; mughīth — one who comes to the rescue. Indeed istighātha (calling for help) is from the same root.

A ghayth, then, is not "falling water" but water that comes to the rescue. The word itself names the rain as a help.

For comparison:

And the placement in the verse confirms the word: min baʿdi mā qanaṭū — "after they had despaired". Help becomes "rescue" only when hope has been given up.

Qunūṭ — the complete cutting off of hope. The lexicographers count it more severe than yaʾs (despair): yaʾs is the ending of hope, qunūṭ is the collapse that comes with the ending of hope.

And the verb is plural: qanaṭū — "they despaired". Its subject is not stated outright, but from the context it is understood to be human beings.

A point of arrangement: the pattern min baʿdi mā comes for the third time in the sūra.

The same pattern, three times; the first two describe an evil a person does after a piece of knowledge, the third a good that comes after a person's hope has ended. This is a fact that can be verified from the text.

I record this as my own reading: the pattern is a pattern of "after", and in all three uses what is unexpected is recounted — twice in the bad direction, once in the good.

Nashr — root ن-ش-ر: to spread, to open; to unroll and lay out what has been folded. From the same root nashr (rising and spreading out at the resurrection), muntashir (spread out) — treated in al-Qamar.

And the object of the verb is not "rain" but mercy. The sentence, that is, gives first the concrete (rain), then the abstract (mercy), and joins the two in the same sentence.

In the ninth verse fa'llāhu huwa'l-waliyy occurred, and there the proof of protectorship was "He gives life to the dead".

Here the same name comes again, and with its proof: dead ground revived by rain.

This is a fact that can be verified from the text and was pointed to at the ninth verse. Two sentences about the protector, two pictures of revival.

حَمِيد — root ح-م-د. It was treated in al-Ḥadīd at 57/24: ḥamīd is an intensive pattern in the sense of "the praised" (maḥmūd). And what was recorded there was this: had ghanī been said on its own it would have set up a distance; ḥamīd balances it — the one who needs nothing is at the same time worthy of praise, that is, the relation continues.

Here the same balance is struck with a different pair: walī + ḥamīd. Protectorship conveys nearness, ḥamīd that the return is deserved.