إِنْ هُوَ إِلَّا عَبْدٌ أَنْعَمْنَا عَلَيْهِ وَجَعَلْنَٰهُ مَثَلًا لِّبَنِىٓ إِسْرَٰٓءِيلَ · وَلَوْ نَشَآءُ لَجَعَلْنَا مِنكُم مَّلَٰٓئِكَةً فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ يَخْلُفُونَ
In huwa illā ʿabdun anʿamnā ʿalayhi wa jaʿalnāhu mathalan li-banī Isrāʾīl · Wa law nashāʾu la-jaʿalnā minkum malāʾikatan fi'l-arḍi yakhlufūn
"He is nothing but a servant on whom We bestowed favour; and We made him an example for the Children of Israel. Had We willed, We could have made of you angels to succeed you on the earth."
The sentence is built with one of the strongest patterns of limitation in Arabic: in (negation) + illā (exception). This is called ḥaṣr (restriction).
The sentence, that is, does not say "he is a servant"; it says "he is nothing other than a servant".
And the root ع-ب-د occurred in the sūra at the nineteenth verse: alladhīna hum ʿibādu'r-Raḥmān (of the angels).
| Verse | About whom | Expression |
|---|---|---|
| 19 | The angels | alladhīna hum ʿibādu'r-Raḥmān |
| 59 | The son of Mary | in huwa illā ʿabdun anʿamnā ʿalayh |
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is that the two verses use the same word: the sūra does not answer the two different claims (that the angels are God's daughters / the claim about the son of Mary) separately. It puts the same name to both.
And the word is not a belittling — this needs writing out plainly. The continuation of the sentence says anʿamnā ʿalayhi (on whom We bestowed favour). To be a "servant", that is, is not outside the favour but inside it.
The root ن-ع-م occurred in the twelfth verse as anʿām (livestock) and in the thirteenth as niʿmata rabbikum. The same root comes here for the third time.
| Reading | Its meaning |
|---|---|
| 1 | An example, a lesson — one from whom instruction is taken |
| 2 | An extraordinary proof — a sign of God's power (birth without a father) |
| Verse | Whose mathal | Who sets it |
|---|---|---|
| 8 | Those of old | The text |
| 17 | What is ascribed to al-Raḥmān | The other side |
| 56 | The people of Pharaoh | The text |
| 57-58 | The son of Mary | The other side (for the sake of argument) |
| 59 | The son of Mary | The text (for the Children of Israel) |
The same word five times and from two different hands. The fifty-seventh and the fifty-ninth verses are about the same person, but they are two different mathals.
I record this as a datum of the text and add as an observation: the sūra keeps track of whose hand the word "example" is in. The other side makes the example into material for argument; the text places the same person as a sign.
| Reading | The sense of the sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | "We would have put angels in your place" — human beings depart, angels succeed them on the earth |
| 2 | "We would have brought forth angels from among you" — creating angels out of human beings; that is, the kind of creation is something that can be chosen |
| 3 | "Angels would have come after you" — in the sense of the succession of generations |
Yakhlufūn — from the root خ-ل-ف: to come after someone, to take his place. Khalīfa is from the same root.
The verse's work within the block can be recorded, and I give this as my own reading: the block was arguing about the position of the angels and of the son of Mary. This verse removes the ground of the argument by recalling that the angels too are created and that the order of creation is a matter of choice.