Muḥammad 47:16

Wa minhum man yastamiʿu ilayka ḥattā idhā kharajū min ʿindika qālū li'lladhīna ūtu'l-ʿilma mādhā qāla ānifā; ulāʾika'lladhīna ṭabaʿa'llāhu ʿalā qulūbihim wa'ttabaʿū ahwāʾahum

"And among them are those who listen to you; then, when they go out from your presence, they say to those who have been given knowledge: 'What did he say just now?' Those are the ones on whose hearts God has set a seal, and who have followed their own desires."

The verse sets up a scene, and the details of the scene matter:

• There is a place: min ʿindika — "from your presence". That is, a gathering.
• There is an act: yastamiʿu — to listen.
• There is a departure: kharajū — they went out.
• There is a question: mādhā qāla ānifā — "what did he say just now?"
• And the question has an addressee: alladhīna ūtu'l-ʿilma — those who have been given knowledge.

That is: two groups seated in the same gathering. Having heard the same voice. When the gathering ends one asks the other.

And here is the most striking detail of the verse.

Root: س-م-ع — to hear. But the form used in the verse is يَسْتَمِعُ — Form X (istifʿāl).

The difference in Arabic between samiʿa and istamaʿa is one the lexicographers record particularly:

The Qurʾān uses all three together and preserves the distinction: "When the Qurʾān is recited, listen to it (fa'stamiʿū) and be silent (wa anṣitū)" (al-Aʿrāf 7/204).

That is, the verb in this verse recounts not an absent-minded hearing but a deliberate listening.

And this carries the whole weight of the verse.

Had the verb been yasmaʿu, the outcome would be intelligible: they were not paying attention, they missed it. But the verb is yastamiʿu. They listened. They lent their ears. They came and sat in the gathering.

And when they went out they had nothing in their hands.

This is where the verse makes its diagnosis: the emptiness does not come from inattention. The act was done, the outcome did not form.

The verb is made transitive with the particle إِلَىٰ: yastamiʿu ilayka.

In Arabic this verb can take either ilā or a direct object. When it comes with ilā the sense of turning towards is strengthened: "he lends his ear in your direction".

And note: what is listened to is not the words but the person. The verse does not say "they listen to what you say"; it says "they listen to you".

An observation — it is my own reading: listening to a person and listening to what is said are different things. One who listens to the person is present at the gathering, turns his face, even shows interest. One who listens to the words follows what the words say. The scene of the verse shows that the first is possible without the second.

I do not present this as a binding exegesis; the use of the particle ilā is standard in Arabic and it is not necessary to draw a meaning from it.

A detail of word order: the sentence begins in the singular (man yastamiʿu — the one who listens) and moves to the plural (kharajū, qālū, ahwāʾahum).

Again ḥaml ʿala'l-maʿnā: man is verbally singular, plural in meaning. The same shift was present in the fourteenth verse.

And the ḥattā idhā pattern: the same pattern was present in the fourth verse (ḥattā idhā athkhantumūhum). This pattern marks the threshold of a process: something continues, and at a certain point something else happens.

The threshold marked here is the door of the gathering. Inside, the listening goes on; on stepping out of the door, the question comes out.

ءَانِفًا — root أ-ن-ف. And the concrete sense of the root: the nose.

أَنْف (anf) — nose. And the family of meanings that comes out of it:

That is, ānifan means "the near past", and the picture of the word is this: the nose of the past — its outermost, nearest part.

The word occurs in this form only here in the Qurʾān.

And the choice of the word stresses how short a time ago the question refers to. The question is not "what did he say the other day?"; it is "what did he say just now?"

They have stepped out of the door. The voice is still in the air.

With what intention this question is asked has been debated in the classical commentaries:

In the classical commentaries the first two views are widely transmitted. I make no preference.

But I record this: the continuation of the verse makes a diagnosis — ṭabaʿa'llāhu ʿalā qulūbihim — and this diagnosis agrees with all three readings. The mocker, the one who does not understand and the one who is indifferent have all arrived at the same outcome: the word did not enter.

And this expression is the sharpest detail in the verse.

Whom do they ask? Those who have been given knowledge.

أُوتُوا۟ — passive: "they were given". That is, knowledge is named not as something acquired but as something given.

And this completes the scene:

That is, the verse records the difference between two groups who were in the same room.

And this is the subject of the next verse (17). The sixteenth verse recounts those who were emptied, the seventeenth those in whom there was increase.

طَبَعَ — root ط-ب-ع: to seal, to press a stamp upon something. From the same root طَابِع (a seal), طَبِيعَة (nature — the unchanging make of a thing, stamped upon it), طِبَاعَة (printing, the press).

The concrete picture of the root: pressing a stamp into a soft material (wax, clay) so that the material now takes that form.

And the particle is striking: عَلَىٰ. Ṭabaʿa ʿalā qulūbihim — "He set a seal upon their hearts". The seal is placed not inside the heart but on top of it.

This will come back in the twenty-fourth verse — there the locks too will be upon the heart: am ʿalā qulūbin aqfāluhā.

The same particle, the same organ, two different means of closing. And there is an important difference: in verse 16 the agent is stated (God); in verse 24 it is not. I shall take this up separately at verse 24.

And on the matter of the heart: this concept was treated in full in al-Baqara (2/7 — khatama'llāhu ʿalā qulūbihim) and the root ق-ل-ب was taken up in al-Mulk, al-Muṭaffifīn, al-Inshiqāq, al-Humaza and al-Nāziʿāt. I do not repeat it here. The one note to be carried over from there is this:

"قَلْب is in the Qurʾān not the organ of feeling but the centre of understanding, deciding and turning towards. Its root is ق-ل-ب, meaning 'to turn, to turn over' — the heart's bearing this name is explained by its turning from state to state."

And this sharpens the picture of the seal — it is my own reading: the heart is the thing that turns; the seal is the thing that stops the turning. The root of the word and the operation performed upon it are each other's opposite.

This clause is letter for letter the same as the last clause of verse 14.

47/14: … wa'ttabaʿū ahwāʾahum 47/16: … wa'ttabaʿū ahwāʾahum

The same sentence, two verses apart. And the subjects of the two verses appear to be different groups: in 14 those whose deed has been made to look fair, in 16 those who listen and take nothing.

The sūra seals two different scenes with the same sentence.

An observation — it is my own reading: in both cases there is a filling. The person whose deed is made to look fair fills the empty place with an adornment; the person who listens and takes nothing fills the empty place with his own desire. That the sentence is the same in both places says that the emptiness is filled with the same thing.

I present this as a reading, not as a transmitted report.