Muḥammad 47:19

Fa'lam annahū lā ilāha illa'llāhu wa'staghfir li-dhanbika wa li'l-muʾminīna wa'l-muʾmināt; wa'llāhu yaʿlamu mutaqallabakum wa mathwākum

"Know, then, that there is no god but God, and ask forgiveness for your sin and for the believing men and the believing women. God knows the place where you move about and the place where you come to rest."

This verse is the turning point of the sūra, and its first word deserves to be dwelt on separately.

The word is an imperative: ٱعْلَمْ — "know".

And this is a remarkable choice. The word of tawḥīd occurs many times in the Qurʾān; but here it is set out with an imperative verb, and the verb chosen is not to believe but to know.

The sentence could have been:

• fa-āmin annahū lā ilāha illa'llāh — "believe that…". It does not say this.
• fa-qul lā ilāha illa'llāh — "say that…". It does not say this.
• fa'shhad — "bear witness". It does not say this.

فَٱعْلَمْ — know.

Root: ع-ل-م. This root has been treated in many places in this commentary (al-Ḥujurāt — its distribution in that sūra; al-Raḥmān — the weave of ʿallama and aʿlām; al-Jumuʿa — yuʿallimu and gradualness; al-Najm). I do not repeat it here.

One note to be carried over from there: as was stated in al-Raḥmān, the lexicographers connect this root with عَلَامَة (ʿalāma — a mark); on that account knowledge is what is obtained by setting out from the mark of a thing.

And this sharpens the verse's command — because in the preceding verse exactly أَشْرَاط (signs) had occurred.

Two verses in succession: the signs have come → know.

I record this connection as my own reading. The relation in root between ʿilm and ʿalāma is a view the lexicographers record and is not certain; to rest this sequence between the two verses upon it is my own inference.

The word order of the verse sets up a sequence:

1. فَٱعْلَمْ — know. 2. وَٱسْتَغْفِرْ — ask forgiveness.

Knowledge first, act after. And the two commands are joined with a wāw; the wāw announces mere conjunction, not sequence — but the order in the wording stands in the text all the same.

In the classical sources this verse has been cited as a proof for the principle that "knowledge comes before deed". It is transmitted that in al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ, in the Book of Knowledge, there is a chapter heading to this effect, and that this verse is cited there.

I transmit this as it is transmitted; I do not speak with certainty about the exact wording of the source.

And an observation on the principle itself — it is my own reading:

The work a person does can be done independently of his knowing why he does it. The sequence of the verse ties the second command (istighfār) to the first (knowledge). Asking forgiveness is a behaviour that can be performed without knowing from whom it is asked; the verse closes this off first.

فَٱعْلَمْ أَنَّهُۥ لَآ إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا ٱللَّهُ — the هُ pronoun in annahū is the pronoun of the matter (ḍamīru'sh-shaʾn): a pronoun that stands for the whole of the sentence following it and refers back to nothing before it.

The work of this pronoun is to make what follows it important. The grammarians record: ḍamīru'sh-shaʾn adds a weight and a drawing of attention to the sentence — "the matter is this, that…".

The word of tawḥīd is one of the densest sentences in Arabic, and its structure should be recorded briefly:

لَآ — lā al-nāfiya li'l-jins: the lā that negates the genus. In the eleventh verse the same particle was present in lā mawlā lahum.

This particle does not say "there is not a god"; it says "there is nothing of the genus of god".

إِلَٰهَ — its noun, indeclinable on fatḥa.

And its predicate is elided. The grammarians dispute what this predicate is: mawjūd (existing) or ḥaqqun (true)? The second implied form is the widespread one, because if the first is accepted the sentence would deny the existence of other objects of worship — whereas what is denied is not their existence but their being gods.

I content myself with recording this debate and I make no preference.

إِلَّا ٱللَّهُ — the exception; and the divine name comes in the nominative (because it is a badal).

ٱسْتَغْفِرْ — root غ-ف-ر, Form X: to ask for forgiveness. The form announces a request.

ذَنۢب — root ذ-ن-ب. And the concrete sense of the root matters: ذَنَب (dhanab) — tail.

The connection the lexicographers make is this: dhanb is what comes behind a deed — its result, its outcome. That is, sin is named in the root of the word as "the thing that trails after".

And this shares the same picture with the sūra's roots ع-ق-ب (outcome, 10) and د-ب-ر (tadabbur / adbār, 24-25-27): what comes from behind.

The real question in this verse is the addressee of the command: the Prophet is told "ask forgiveness for your sin".

The classical commentaries have dwelt on this and given several explanations:

These views are transmitted in the classical commentaries. I make no preference and I do not enter the theological debate on the impeccability of the prophets.

The only thing I shall record is what stands in the text: the verse opens istighfār to two addressees — first to himself, then to the believers. And the order runs in that direction.

And the verse does not content itself with naming the believers by a single word (li'l-muʾminīn); it counts men and women separately.

In Arabic the masculine plural covers mixed groups as well. That is, had li'l-muʾminīn been said, women would have been included. Even so the verse mentions the two separately.

This is a usage seen in several places in the Qurʾān and the best known is al-Aḥzāb 33/35 — where ten pairs of attributes are listed separately for men and for women.

What is to be recorded is this: a distinction not grammatically necessary has been made in the text. And the place where this distinction is made is a sentence of prayer.

I record this as a textual observation; I do not attempt to draw a general conclusion from it, but it needs to be stated that the distinction stands in the text.

The verse closes by repeating at its end the root of its first word:

• فَٱعْلَمْ — know (imperative, addressee: you).
• وَٱللَّهُ يَعْلَمُ — God knows (a statement, subject: God).

The same root at its two ends. And in between something changes: who it is that knows.

I record this as an observation about word order.

مُتَقَلَّب — root ق-ل-ب, the noun of place / verbal noun of Form V: the place where one turns about, or the state of turning about.

مَثْوَى — root م-ث-و: the place where one stops, where one stays. This word occurred in verse 12 (wa'n-nāru mathwan lahum).

The two words form a pair and are opposites:

That is, the sentence divides a person's life into two states: the time he moves and the time he is still. And it says that it knows both.

And there is disagreement over what the two are:

All of these views are transmitted in the classical commentaries. I make no preference.

I record this much: what the four views have in common is that the two words have been chosen so as to cover the whole of a human life. Whichever division is taken, there is no time left outside.

And the pronoun is in the second person plural: كُمْ. The first two commands of the verse were singular (fa'lam, wa'staghfir — to the Prophet); the last sentence moves to the plural. This is iltifāt (a shift in the direction of address).

This shift agrees with the general tendency of the sūra: the text opens out a word spoken to one person upon everyone. We shall see the same movement in verse 30 as well — there too the clause wa taʿrifannahum (singular) will close with wa'llāhu yaʿlamu aʿmālakum (plural).