Qāf 50:44

Yawma tashaqqaqu'l-arḍu ʿanhum sirāʿā; dhālika ḥashrun ʿalaynā yasīr

"On that day the earth splits open from them, and they come forth in haste. That is a gathering easy for Us."

This root was treated in the section on al-Inshiqāq, and the verse before us was taken into a table there. The note there was this:

"In this root there is neither birth nor building. What happens here is the breaking apart of a whole. The other branches of the root — mashaqqa (wearing hardship), shiqāq (division) — all face the same way: something was holding together, and it holds no longer."

And in the table in al-Inshiqāq this note was set down for this verse: "the earth splits open from them → to the coming forth of the dead."

Here I add what belongs to Qāf.

The verb is in the tafaʿʿul form and carries a reflexivity close to a passive: tashaqqaqu — "it keeps splitting", "it splits piece by piece". The tafaʿʿul form may add gradualness here as well: not all at once, but splitting and splitting.

And the particle matters: tashaqqaqu'l-arḍu ʿanhum — "the earth splits from them".

The particle ʿan states separation. The earth, that is, opens off them — as though a covering over them were being drawn away.

And this sets up an echo with the twenty-second verse:

The same particle, the same movement: an opening from above.

I present this as my own reading; the particle and the verb structure in the two verses stand in the text.

Root: س-ر-ع. To be swift. Surʿa — speed; sarīʿ — swift; sirāʿ — the plural of sarīʿ.

The word is in the accusative as a circumstantial and in the plural: "as swift ones". It states the condition of those who come out.

And it sets up a contrast: death and lying in the earth are a motionless state; the coming forth is swift.

The Qurʾān records this haste in other places too: "They come out of their graves running" (expressions such as al-Maʿārij 70/43). That scene was treated in the section on al-Maʿārij.

حَشْر — root ح-ش-ر. To gather into a place, to drive together. In the concrete sense of the root there is the driving together of what is scattered.

يَسِير — root ي-س-ر. To be easy. Yusr — ease; maysara — abundance, means; yasār — the left hand (the less used hand in Arabic).

And here the line built in the fifteenth and thirty-eighth verses is completed:

Three verses say the same idea with three different words in three different places: a question, a negation, an affirmation.

And a note is needed — it was set down at the fifteenth verse too: no distinction between "easy" and "hard" is drawn with respect to God. Such expressions speak in the addressee's measure. The note set down for "that is easier for Him" at al-Rūm 30/27 holds here as well.

And there is a fronting in the word order: ʿalaynā (for Us) has been brought forward. What is stressed, that is, is for whom it is easy: not for you, but for Us.