Muḥammad 47:37

In yasʾalkumūhā fa-yuḥfikum tabkhalū wa yukhrij aḍghānakum

"If He were to ask you for it and press you to the last for it, you would be miserly, and [this] would bring out your rancours."

The verse takes the last clause of the preceding verse and turns it around, and recounts what would happen.

And the word order strings three verbs into a chain:

1. يَسْـَٔلْكُمُوهَا — were He to ask, 2. فَيُحْفِكُمْ — and were He to press hard, 3. تَبْخَلُوا۟ — you would be miserly, 4. وَيُخْرِجْ أَضْغَٰنَكُمْ — and it would bring out your rancours.

All three verbs are jussive (parts of a conditional sentence). And the chain runs from cause to effect.

Root: ح-ف-و / ح-ف-ي. And the concrete sense of the root carries the whole force of the word.

The senses the lexicographers record:

And the common core: to take a thing to the bottom, to leave nothing remaining.

That is, إِحْفَاء is not an ordinary asking; it is pressing to the very end. The picture of the word is the foot's being worn down by walking or hair's being cut off at the root: leaving nothing behind.

And this sets up an exact contrast with the clause of the preceding verse:

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

Root: ب-خ-ل. This root was treated in the sections al-Layl (92/8 — wa ammā man bakhila wa'staghnā) and al-Ḥadīd (57/24). I do not repeat it here.

The meaning of the root: to hold back from giving what one has, to withhold. And the lexicographers define bukhl as "not giving where giving is due" — that is, an obligation is implied in the word.

And what the sentence says is clear: the pressing does not produce the miserliness; it makes it visible.

This follows from the word order of the verse: between tabkhalū (you would be miserly) and yukhrij aḍghānakum (it would bring out your rancours) there is a wāw; the second verb comes not as the consequence of the first but as something accompanying it.

And now we come to the place where the movement I recorded at verse 29 is completed.

The same word, the same verb, two different pronouns.

And this is the most noteworthy movement of the sūra: the word used in the twenty-ninth verse while speaking about "those in whose hearts is a disease" is said eight verses later directly to the believers.

That is, the sūra carries the diagnosis from outside inward.

And in terms of the method (Method) this matters greatly: if a text sets a heavy diagnosis upon others and leaves the one it addresses outside it, the addressee uses that diagnosis as a weapon. This sūra does not do that. It uses the same word upon the one it addresses too.

And note: in verse 37 there is a condition. In yasʾalkum — "were He to ask". That is, the presence of the rancours is not asserted; the possibility of their coming out is recounted.

This is a fine but important difference: the verse does not say to the believers "there is rancour in you". It says "were you pressed, what is there would show".

I rest this finding on the conditional mood of the verse.

What the verse says looks to the present without any need to force it, and it has two parts.

One. The measure of a demand is as important as the demand itself.

The thirty-sixth verse drew the limit of the demand; the thirty-seventh says what would happen were the limit removed. That is, the measure is not an arbitrary lightening; it is something required for the system to work.

When an obligation ceases to be bearable, it produces in the one trying to bear it something set against the obligation. The verse calls this aḍghān.

Two. Pressure does not produce what is inside a person; it makes it visible.

And the verse does not present this as a benefit. The context of the sentence is negative: the pressing is not done, because its outcome is bad.

I record this second point as my own reading; the verse lays down no general rule of the form "pressure shows what is within".