Muḥammad 47:36

Innama'l-ḥayātu'd-dunyā laʿibun wa lahw; wa in tuʾminū wa tattaqū yuʾtikum ujūrakum wa lā yasʾalkum amwālakum

"The life of this world is only a play and a diversion. If you believe and guard yourselves, [God] will give you your rewards and will not ask you for your wealth."

This pair was analysed in full in the section al-Ḥadīd (57/20) — the analysis of the list of five words, the distribution of the patterns, and the distinction between laʿib and lahw. And the word lahw was also analysed in the section al-Takāthur. I do not repeat it here.

Two notes to be carried over from there:

لعب — root ل-ع-ب: to play. At the centre of the word lies purposelessness: an occupation with no outcome, done for its own sake. لهو — root ل-ه-و, the primary sense being to turn away from a thing, to be occupied with something else; at the centre of lahw there is not merriment but displacement — the attention is taken from one place and put in another.

And the distinction: laʿib is aimless play, lahw is what draws a person away from what matters.

The Qurʾān describes the life of this world with these two words in several places, and the length of the list varies:

And this sūra uses the shortest form.

An observation — it is my own reading: as was recorded in al-Ḥadīd, in the list of five the last two words (tafākhur and takāthur) were in Form VI (tafāʿul), which announces reciprocity, and there the matter became social. Those two words are absent in this sūra. And the rest of the sūra already treats the social matter with other words: rancours (29, 37), the secret agreement (26), ties of kinship (22), miserliness (37-38).

I present this as a reading; it is not necessary to draw a meaning from the shortness of the list.

And a note on method is needed, because this verse is easily misread.

The verse does not say "the life of this world is worthless". What it says is narrower and is determined by the root senses of the two words:

• لَعِب — an occupation with no outcome.
• لَهْو — a preoccupation that draws one away from the real work.

That is, the description is not of the world itself but of what the world is when taken by itself.

And the proof of this is in the second half of the verse: after giving this description the verse sets the condition of faith and guarding oneself and promises a reward in return. That is, the same life becomes something else when the condition is met.

And this was recorded in al-Ḥadīd as well: al-Ḥadīd 57/20, after listing the five words, says in the same verse "and in the hereafter there is a severe punishment and a forgiveness from God and good pleasure". That is, there too the description is not left standing alone.

The second conditional sentence of the sūra. The first was in verse 7: in tanṣuru'llāha yanṣurkum.

Both are built with إِنْ (the conditional of possibility) and the answer of each has two parts.

I record this parallel as an observation about word order.

تَتَّقُوا۟ — root و-ق-ي, Form VIII. At verse 17 taqwāhum occurred; the word was treated in al-Baqara and al-Ḥujurāt and I do not repeat it here.

أَجْر — root أ-ج-ر: the return for a piece of work, a wage.

And the pronoun is striking again: أُجُورَكُمْ — "your wages".

This is the same structure as taqwāhum in verse 17: the requital, though it is something given, is attributed to the one who receives it. Not "a wage" but "your wage" — that is, earned, belonging to you.

I record this as an observation about word order.

And the last clause of the verse is the key to this sūra's treatment of spending.

The clause: "He does not ask you for your wealth."

And the subtlety here lies in the word أَمْوَٰلَكُمْ being definite, with a pronoun, and whole.

The clause could have been:

• lā yasʾalkum mālan — "He does not ask you for wealth" (indefinite). It does not say this.
• lā yasʾalkum min amwālikum — "He does not ask of your wealth". Nor does it say this.

أَمْوَٰلَكُمْ — definite, with a pronoun, and without a partitive: "your wealth", that is, the whole of your wealth.

In the classical commentaries this is explained thus: God does not ask for the whole of wealth; what He asks is a particular proportion (zakāt). The obligation has been set upon a part of what is owned, not upon the whole.

This explanation is widespread in the classical commentaries and agrees with the wording of the verse.

And the verse's link with the next verse confirms it: verse 37 sets up a hypothetical case with "had He asked and pressed you hard". That is, "not asking" is understood, in the verse's own continuation, as not asking for the whole.

An observation — it is my own reading: this qualification is a limiting clause placed inside a clause of encouragement. The verse encourages spending and in the same sentence writes the limit of the demand. This prevents the encouragement and the demand from running into one another.

And I find this qualification particularly important because the text itself does it: the limit of a religious demand is drawn by the very text that conveys the demand.