al-Māʾida 5:31

Fa-baʿatha'llāhu ghurāban yabḥathu fi'l-arḍi li-yuriyahū kayfa yuwārī sawʾata akhīh · Qāla yā waylatā a-ʿajaztu an akūna mithla hādha'l-ghurābi fa-uwāriya sawʾata akhī · Fa-aṣbaḥa mina'n-nādimīn

"Then God sent a raven scratching in the earth, to show him how to cover over his brother's body. He said: Woe to me! Am I unable to be even like this raven, and cover over my brother's body? And he became one of the regretful."

The concrete sense of the root: to scratch at the soil, to scrape, to turn over what is underneath.

And the root's second sense arises from this: to investigate, to examine. The Turkish words "bahis", "bahsetmek", "mebhas" (a topic, to discuss, a treatise) come from this root; in Arabic today "baḥth" (scholarly research) is the same word.

That is, in Arabic the word for "research" comes from the motion of an animal scratching at the earth. To open up the top of something and look underneath.

And this fits the scene of the verse exactly: the raven scratches (yabḥathu), and this scratching becomes a teaching (li-yuriyahū).

The sense of the root: to put a thing behind oneself, to conceal it, to cover it. Warāʾ — behind, beyond (the Turkish "verâ" and "mâverâ" are from this root: what lies beyond). Tawāriya — to be hidden.

That the word belongs to this root is interesting: on the word's own logic, to bury is to put something behind — to take it out of the field of sight.

سَوْءَة — root س-و-أ: to be bad, to be ugly. Sawʾa — what is not pleasant to see, what ought to be covered. The word is used in the Qurʾān both of bodily privacy (al-Aʿrāf 7/20-22) and, here, of a corpse.

The choice of word should be recorded: the verse does not say "corpse" or "his brother"; it says "what ought to be covered". That is, the covering of the dead is named not as a matter of hygiene but as a matter of decency. I record this as my own reading.

I record this as my own reading; its ground is the scene itself:

The man who commits the first murder does not know what to do with the body. That is, murder is not something man is ready for. And a raven is sent as the teacher — a creature he counts as beneath himself.

The sentence itself writes down this lowliness: a-ʿajaztu an akūna mithla hādha'l-ghurāb — "could I not manage even as much as this raven?"

غُرَاب — root غ-ر-ب: to go far off, to depart, to separate. Ghurba — being far away; gharīb — a stranger; maghrib — the place from which the sun goes off, the west. The root was treated at al-Muzzammil 73/9 (rabbu'l-mashriqi wa'l-maghrib).

The lexicographers explain the word's being used for the raven in two ways: (a) because its colour has darkened, has gone off; (b) because it is a bird that goes far away, that migrates. I make no firm preference.

The preceding verse ended with fa-aṣbaḥa mina'l-khāsirīn; this verse ends with fa-aṣbaḥa mina'n-nādimīn. The same pattern, in two consecutive verses.

And the order should be recorded: the loss comes before the regret. The person loses first and regrets afterwards.

The root ن-د-م: regret. Some of the lexicographers connect the word with nadīm (a table companion) — I do not give this link as certain; the lexicographers do not agree.

And the verse does not say what the regret brought. No pardon, no repentance, no return is recounted in the narrative. Regret stands as the last word of the sentence. I record this as an observation about the word order.