al-Dukhān 44:32-33

Wa laqadi'khtarnāhum ʿalā ʿilmin ʿala'l-ʿālamīn · Wa ātaynāhum mina'l-āyāti mā fīhi balāʾun mubīn

"And We chose them, upon a knowledge, above all beings. And We gave them of the signs that in which there is a manifest trial."

The root occurred in al-Wāqiʿa, al-Qalam, al-Raḥmān and al-Jumuʿa. Its concrete sense: good, benefit. And Form VIII, ikhtāra — to choose: that is, "to take the better".

The logic of the root is worth recording: in Arabic to choose is not to make a preference but to set apart what is good. The word carries a judgement of value within itself.

And it has a counterpart within the sūra — this is a verifiable datum:

The same root, five verses apart, for two communities. The one reports a being chosen, the other asks a question.

I present this as my own reading; the shared root of the two verses is verifiable, but that they form a pattern is my interpretation.

The phrase is indefinite: "upon a knowledge".

And whose knowledge it is is not said. This is a pattern repeated across the sūras and has been treated twice before:

The principle recorded in al-Aḥqāf works here too:

"Not indefinite, but closed to man."

And the work of the phrase is this: the choice is not arbitrary — it rests on a knowledge. But what that knowledge is is not said. The verse, that is, both says something about the ground of the choice (there is a ground) and does not say it (what it is is not reported).

The exegetes differ over the scope of this phrase:

I do not impose a preference.

But I am bound to enter two records, and both are required by Method.

One. In this commentary no wholesale ruling is issued about a community. What the verse describes is a situation: something was given to a community. What was given is said in the next verse, and that word is decisive: balāʾ — a trial.

Two. The Qurʾān does not leave this expression standing alone. The same pattern occurs at al-Baqara 2/47 and 2/122 (wa annī faḍḍaltukum ʿala'l-ʿālamīn), and there too an obligation follows it. This context was treated in al-Baqara; I rely on that treatment.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the order of the two verses: the thirty-second verse states the pre-eminence, the thirty-third the trial. There is nothing between them. The pre-eminence, that is, is presented not as a privilege whose outcome is settled but as an examination whose outcome is open.

Root: ب-ل-و. Its concrete sense: to test, to try — and the lexicographers record the root's second branch as well: to wear out, to wear away (bilā — wearing out). The link is this: to test a thing is to use it until it wears.

And the most important feature of the word is this, and the Qurʾān says it openly: a balāʾ comes both with good and with evil. "We try you with evil and with good, as a testing" (al-Anbiyāʾ 21/35).

The usual English rendering, "affliction", is therefore not the same thing as the Arabic balāʾ: the English word carries only misfortune, while the Arabic covers both sides.

And this is decisive for understanding the verse: what is given is signs — that is, proofs, marks, miracles. And within those signs there is a balāʾ.

I record this as my own reading: a proof is not by itself a favour. A proof is at the same time a burden — because the responsibility of one who has seen the proof is heavier than that of one who has not.

And this reading completes the frame of the block. In the seventeenth verse fatannā (We tried) was said of the people of Pharaoh; in the thirty-third balāʾun mubīn is said of the Children of Israel.

At the two ends of the block stand two words for trial, and the two belong to two separate sides.

I present this as my own reading, and its ground is the wording of the two verses: the sūra does not close the story as a tale of taking sides. The party that is delivered is named with a trial too.

And mubīn occurs here for the fifth and last time. The table drawn up at the second verse of the sūra is completed: the Book, the smoke, the messenger, the proof, the trial — all five "manifest".