al-Māʾida 5:12

Wa laqad akhadha'llāhu mīthāqa banī Isrāʾīla wa baʿathnā minhumu'thnay ʿashara naqībā · Wa qāla'llāhu innī maʿakum · La-in aqamtumu'ṣ-ṣalāta wa ātaytumu'z-zakāta wa āmantum bi-rusulī wa ʿazzartumūhum wa aqraḍtumu'llāha qarḍan ḥasanan la-ukaffiranna ʿankum sayyiʾātikum wa la-udkhilannakum jannātin tajrī min taḥtiha'l-anhār · Fa-man kafara baʿda dhālika minkum fa-qad ḍalla sawāʾa's-sabīl

"God had taken the covenant of the Children of Israel, and We raised up twelve representatives from among them. And God said: I am with you. If you keep up the prayer, and give the alms, and believe in My messengers, and support them, and lend God a goodly loan, I shall certainly cover over your evil deeds for you, and shall certainly bring you into gardens with rivers running beneath them. Whoever among you disbelieves after that has strayed from the level road."

This block, running from 5/12 to 5/26, speaks of the undertakings taken from past communities and of what became of those undertakings. Per the method (Method) the following qualifications will be kept throughout this section, and they follow from the text itself:

1. The structure of the verses is conditional. At the centre of verse 12 stands la-in (if), and the promise is tied to five conditions. No verdict about an identity, independent of the conditions, can be drawn from a conditional sentence. 2. The outcome is tied not to identity but to an act. Verse 13 begins with fa-bimā naqḍihim mīthāqahum: the cause is the act of breaking one's word. 3. The verses themselves speak by dividing. At 13 there is the qualification illā qalīlan minhum (except a few of them), at 14 wa mina'lladhīna qālū (from among those who said). 4. And the section ends with a command to pardon: fa'fu ʿanhum wa'ṣfaḥ (13).

These four qualifications show that the text itself blocks any blanket verdict about a community. This section keeps that block in place.

نَقِيب — root ن-ق-ب: to bore through, to penetrate, to search out the inside of a thing. Naqb — a hole opened in a wall; niqāb — the eye-opening in a face-veil; manqaba — a person's known, brought-to-light merit.

That is, on the word's own logic a naqīb is one who "has penetrated into a community and knows its condition". Not an administrator but one who knows and reports. The Qurʾān uses the same root in the form fa-naqqabū fi'l-bilād (Qāf 50/36) — "they bored their way through the lands."

That the number is twelve has to do with the Children of Israel's being divided into twelve branches; the sūra does not explain this further, and I construct no historical narrative here.

The sentence says "I am with you", and a condition follows immediately. At al-Ḥadīd 57/4 wa huwa maʿakum was treated, and it was recorded there: being-with (maʿiyya) is not physical side-by-sideness. I rely on that treatment.

The being-with here is one that conveys protection and support, and it is framed by the conditions that follow it.

The promise is tied by la-in (if) to five verbs:

عَزَّرْتُمُوهُمْ — root ع-ز-ر: the sense the lexicographers give runs in two directions, and both should be recorded: (a) to help, to support, to back; (b) to hold back, to fend off, to restrain a person from evil.

The two senses do not contradict: to back someone is to fend off what would harm him. From the same root comes taʿzīr in the language of law — where the sense is "a penalty that restrains a person from evil". The legal content of taʿzīr is not entered into in this section.

It is transmitted that the word is read ʿazzartumūhum (with doubling) and ʿazartumūhum (without); I name no authority.

أَقْرَضْتُمُ ٱللَّهَ قَرْضًا حَسَنًا — the root ق-ر-ض: to cut, to clip. Miqrāḍ — shears (the resemblance in sound to the Turkish "kırkmak/kırpmak", to shear and to clip, is a coincidence; I make no claim of derivation). Qarḍ — a portion cut off from one's property and given.

The same construction (qarḍan ḥasanan) was treated at al-Ḥadīd 57/11 and al-Taghābun 64/17; I rely on that treatment. What was recorded there in substance was this: the expression itself sets up an equation — what is given is not lost but written down as a debt.

And that the construction is present in this verse is worth recording: the same expression occurs in an undertaking given to a past community as well. That is, the measure is not new.

Form II of the root ك-ف-ر: takfīr — to cover, to close over. And here the primary sense of the root appears bare: the covering over of evil deeds.

This shows once more a point recorded in many places in this collection: the root ك-ف-ر is not in itself negative; it means to cover. Who does the covering and what is covered settle the word's value. A farmer too is called kāfir — because he covers the seed with earth (this use occurs at al-Ḥadīd 57/20 and was treated in al-Ḥadīd).

And at the end of the verse the same root will come in a negative sense: fa-man kafara baʿda dhālika. The same root, in the same verse, in two opposite directions. When the one covering is God it is mercy; when it is man it is denial.

I record this as my own reading; its ground is the use of the same root with two different agents in a single verse.

فَقَدْ ضَلَّ سَوَآءَ ٱلسَّبِيلِ — sawāʾ, root س-و-ي: evenness, levelness. Sawāʾu's-sabīl — the road in its level state, running down the middle. That is, straying is not leaving the road but sliding from the middle of the road to its edge.