وَيَنصُرَكَ ٱللَّهُ نَصْرًا عَزِيزًا
This verse is the continuation of the second — the fourth verb hanging on the same lām. Its being a separate verse is not a mark of a break but of emphasis: the last item of the series stands on its own.
The full analysis of the root was made at al-Naṣr: to help, to stand behind. One of the concrete uses of the root has to do with rain (naṣara'l-ghaythu'l-arḍa — the rain helped the soil); anṣār, naṣīr, manṣūr, tanāṣur are from the same root. I do not repeat it here.
What belongs here is this: naṣr and fatḥ come side by side many times in the Qurʾān, and the division of labour between them is consistent.
| Verse | Expression | Its position |
|---|---|---|
| al-Ṣaff 61/13 | naṣrun mina'llāhi wa fatḥun qarīb | A promise — not yet come about |
| al-Fatḥ 48/1-3 | fataḥnā… wa yanṣuraka | Realisation + continuation |
| al-Naṣr 110/1 | naṣru'llāhi wa'l-fatḥ | Completion |
Three verses use the same two words at three different times: as it is promised, as it is given, as it is completed.
The difference in the ordering is striking. In al-Ṣaff and al-Naṣr naṣr comes first and fatḥ after — help first, opening second. In this sūra it is reversed: first fatḥ (1), then naṣr (3). I record this as an observation: in this sūra the opening has already happened, and the help is what is to come after the opening. As early as its third verse the sūra says that the matter does not end with the door's being opened.
This root was treated at al-Ḥashr, al-Ḥadīd and al-Jumuʿa in the context of God's name al-ʿAzīz. The primary sense of the root: that a thing is rare, hard to come by, unwearing and unconquerable. ʿIzza — both honour and hardness. Aʿazza — to strengthen. Of ground, arḍun ʿazāz — hard ground that resists cultivation.
In the Qurʾān ʿazīz is almost always a name of God or an attribute of a person. Here it has become an adjective to an act — more precisely to a verbal noun: naṣran ʿazīzā, "an ʿazīz help."
| Explanation | Its meaning |
|---|---|
| Invincible help | A help that cannot be withstood, cannot be blocked, cannot be turned back |
| Help that confers honour | A help that makes the one helped honoured; a help that does not lower the one who receives it |
The second explanation is worth dwelling on, and I unfold it here as my own reading. Help is not always a comfortable thing for the side that receives it; more often than not it brings a debt, a dependence, a diminishment. The one who helps establishes a claim over the one he helps. The verse puts the adjective at exactly this point: this is a help that does not make its receiver smaller.
This reading has a counterpart within the sūra. The event the sūra recounts is, seen from outside, a step backwards, and steps backwards are belittling. In its third line the verse names that step backwards together with the word honour.
A note on the word: the same root will come in verses 7 and 19 of the sūra as a name of God — ʿazīzan ḥakīmā. That is, with three verses in between, the adjective passes from the help to the one who gives it.