Qāf 50:5

Bal kadhdhabū bi'l-ḥaqqi lammā jāʾahum, fa-hum fī amrin marīj

"But they denied the truth when it came to them. Now they are in a tangled affair."

In the second verse it was said bal ʿajibū (they were astonished). Here a second bal comes and climbs a step higher: bal kadhdhabū (they denied).

The difference between the two verbs matters:

The sūra opens the two layers of the objection in turn: on the surface there is astonishment, underneath it there is a verdict. And the second bal corrects the first: "the real matter is not their astonishment."

Lammā — "at the moment when". The denial, that is, came at the same instant as the arrival of the truth. No examination, no thinking, no waiting came in between.

This is the sharpest side of the verse. To reject a claim is not in itself a fault; the fault is that the rejection comes before the examination. The verse marks the timing.

This expression occurs three times in the sūra, and all three build an order:

What they denied comes back, first with death and then with the cry. The same word: what was rejected is at the door a few verses later.

I record this as an observation; all three occurrences stand in the text.

This root was treated in the section on al-Raḥmān. What was recorded there was this:

"The idea beneath the root is mixing and letting loose; the two go together, because things let loose get mixed. Marj — a pasture, the place where an animal is let loose. Marīj — mixed."

Here I add what belongs to Qāf.

Marīj means "mixed"; but the kind of the mixing is specific: entangled with itself, not separating out, not settling anywhere. Like a pasture whose flock has scattered. The lexicographers use the word for indecision and instability.

And the cause and effect the verse builds is striking: fa-hum fī amrin marīj — with the particle fāʾ. The confusion, that is, is not the cause of the denial but its consequence.

This is the reverse of the ordinary expectation. The usual picture is: he was confused, and so he rejected. The verse turns this round: he rejected, and so he was confused.

And it touches on something observable. A person who rejects a thing from the outset is afterwards obliged to build a consistent account of it — and cannot. The Qurʾān lists the verdicts its addressees passed on the Prophet: a poet, a soothsayer, a madman, a sorcerer, one who has been taught. Five separate verdicts about one person. That scatteredness is itself marīj: the rejection is settled, the ground for it is not.

I present this link as my own reading; the verse does not enumerate the grounds, it only names the outcome.

That rejection produces confusion is observable today as well.

A person who rejects a claim without examining it is obliged to explain why the claim exists at all: "why do so many people believe this?" And each attempt at explanation contradicts the last. The rejection is one, the grounds are many — because the grounds were produced after the rejection.

What the verse says is not an accusation but a finding about sequence: if the verdict comes first, the reason runs along behind. This is a working that holds for everyone, without regard to which side they are on.