أَوْ يُوبِقْهُنَّ بِمَا كَسَبُوا۟ وَيَعْفُ عَن كَثِيرٍ
Wabaqa — he perished; in Form IV awbaqa — he destroyed. From the same root مَوْبِق (mawbiq) — a place of destruction; it occurs in the Qurʾān at al-Kahf 18/52.
The verb describes the sinking of ships and, together with the stopping in the preceding verse, sets up two possibilities:
And the arrangement goes from light to heavy. This is the structure of gradation recorded for sina and nawm in al-Baqara at 2/255.
And this is the place that must be recorded: the sentence wa yaʿfū ʿan kathīr occurs twice in the sūra — in the thirtieth and thirty-fourth verses.
| Verse | What precedes | Sentence |
|---|---|---|
| 30 | Mā aṣābakum min muṣībatin fa-bimā kasabat aydīkum | wa yaʿfū ʿan kathīr |
| 34 | Aw yūbiqhunna bimā kasabū | wa yaʿfu ʿan kathīr |
The same note of pardon, in two different contexts, four verses apart. This supports the finding made at the thirtieth verse: the note of pardon is placed beside the "earning–consequence" link by the sūra deliberately and again and again.
A note on grammar: in the thirty-fourth verse the verb comes in the jussive as yaʿfu (wa yaʿfu, not yaʿfū), because it is attached to the preceding conditional sentence. In some readings it is read in the indicative (wa yaʿfū), and on that reading the sentence is independent of the condition, a statement standing on its own. The difference in meaning is small but real: on the attached reading the pardon is particular to that situation; on the independent reading it is a general statement. Since the variant reading touches the meaning I record it; I impose no preference.