وَنَزَّلْنَا مِنَ ٱلسَّمَآءِ مَآءً مُّبَٰرَكًا فَأَنۢبَتْنَا بِهِۦ جَنَّٰتٍ وَحَبَّ ٱلْحَصِيدِ
"And We sent down blessed water from the sky; with it We made gardens grow, and grain for the harvest."
The verb is in the tafʿīl form: nazzala, not anzala. In Arabic the tafʿīl form very often conveys multiplicity, repetition or gradualness.
The distinction the lexicographers record between these two patterns is this: inzāl states a sending down all at once, tanzīl a sending down piece by piece or again and again. This distinction does not work sharply everywhere, and the Qurʾān sometimes uses the two patterns interchangeably; but the use of the tanzīl pattern for rain fits the context: rain comes down not once but again and again.
- بَرَكَ الجَمَل — the camel knelt, folded its knees and settled on the ground.
- بِرْكَة — a pool, a standing body of water; the place where water stays and remains.
- بَرَكَة — good that increases and abides.
At the centre of the root there are two things: settling and increasing. Blessing is not what is much; it is what is much and stays. A plenty that comes and goes is not called blessing.
And that the water is named "blessed" agrees exactly with this sense: the water comes down, remains in the soil, and continues there by increasing. Not a thing that comes once and is over, but a thing that starts a lasting chain of production.
The particle فَ conveys sequence: We sent down, and thereafter We made grow. And بِهِ (with it) points to the means.
The verse, that is, does not hide the intermediate cause. In saying "We made grow" it does not skip over the water; it says "with it We made grow". The existence of causes is granted, but whose hand the cause is in is also stated.
This is the same logic as the four proofs in the section on al-Wāqiʿa, where it was recorded thus: "the sūra does not say 'you do nothing'. It distinguishes what it is that you do." What is distinguished in Qāf is not the human act but the act of the water: the water is an instrument, not an agent.
جَنَّة — root ج-ن-ن. To cover, to conceal. Janna is a garden whose trees interlace and cover the soil. From the same root come jinn (the unseen), janīn (what is covered in the womb), majnūn (one whose mind is covered).
And here again the faʿīl pattern carries a passive sense: ḥaṣīd — "what is reaped". The question of the pattern recorded for ḥafīẓ in the fourth verse is at work here too, but here the sense is not in dispute: grain is what is reaped, not what reaps.
| jannāt | ḥabbu'l-ḥaṣīd | |
|---|---|---|
| What | Gardens, trees | Grain |
| Its lifetime | It stands for years | One season |
| Its end | It bears fruit and remains | It is reaped |
| To a person | Shade, fruit | Staple food |
And the second is named by its end. The grain is called neither "wheat" nor "crop" but "what is to be reaped".
I give this as my own reading, and its connection with the subject of the sūra is plain: the sūra is about death and resurrection. And here one of the plants is named with the stress on its being cut down. In the next verse the date palm will be named with the stress on its rising. The reaped and the rising: two directions side by side.