al-Dhāriyāt 51:22-23

Wa fi'l-samāʾi rizqukum wa mā tūʿadūn · Fa-wa-rabbi'l-samāʾi wa'l-arḍi innahū la-ḥaqqun mithla mā annakum tanṭiqūn "In the sky is your provision, and what you are promised. By the Lord of the sky and the earth, this is as true as that you are speaking."

The wāw + fī pattern is repeated for the fourth time and the list closes: wealth, the earth, yourselves, the sky.

And the fourth item parts from the first three in one respect: the first three were places the one addressed can reach. His wealth is in his hand, the earth is under his foot, he himself is himself. The sky is the one place that cannot be reached.

The list thus draws an arc: from the nearest (wealth) to the farthest (the sky).

Root: ر-ز-ق. The sense the lexicographers record: a share given to someone regularly; a portion, provisions.

• رِزْق — the share given.
• رَازِق / رَزَّاق — the giver; the second an intensive form.
• And the concrete use of the root: the rations distributed regularly to soldiers or to a company. This use plants in the word the idea of "being divided out within an order".

And here the fourth oath at the head of the sūra returns: al-muqassimāti amrā — those that apportion. Provision is by definition the thing that is apportioned.

The work of "apportioning", left unnamed at the sūra's opening, thus gains an object in the twenty-second verse (rizqukum) and an agent in the fifty-eighth (al-Razzāq).

I record this as a weave within the sūra. The roots of the words differ (ق-س-م / ر-ز-ق); what I claim is not a shared root but that the idea can be followed across the sūra.

This expression has been dwelt on since the classical period, because its literal sense raises a question: provision is eaten on the earth, not in the sky.

The three views do not exclude one another and all three are transmitted in the classical sources.

And the second half of the verse is decisive. Wa mā tūʿadūn — "and what you are promised". In the sky, that is, there are two things: your provision and your word.

That the two are named in the same place establishes an equivalence: as provision comes, so the promise will come.

And this is the very centre of the argument the sūra has been building from the start. In the fifth verse it was said "what you are promised is true"; the twenty-second verse repeats the same expression (mā tūʿadūn) and this time sets it beside provision.

The argument, then, is this: you do not dispute where your provision comes from — it comes every year, it has never failed. The promise will come from the same place.

I transmit this as a link commonly built in the classical commentaries; that the two halves of the verse stand in the same sentence is plain in the text.

This verse too is sometimes made the subject of a scientific claim: it is said that solar energy is the source of the whole food chain, and that "provision being in the sky" therefore announces photosynthesis or solar energy.

I do not build this, and my ground is the same as what was written in the sections on al-Ṭāriq and al-ʿAlaq: the explanation the classical exegetes give (rain) is already correct and sufficient, and it rests on an observation the one addressed can verify directly. No expertise at all is needed to see that water comes down from the sky and that without it there is no crop. To turn the verse into a description of energy takes it out of the reader's hands.

The sūra swears for the third time. And this time the oath is sworn not by a created thing but by the Lord Himself.

A series is being built:

The oath rises. First to the work itself, then to the place where the work is done, and at last to the one who does it.

I record this as an observation about the structure.

And one of the most unusual comparisons in the Qurʾān.

نَطَقَ — to speak, to express with the voice. Root ن-ط-ق. From the same root comes manṭiq (speech, reasoning); the Turkish word mantık ("logic") comes from here.

The verse says: this report is as true as the fact that you are speaking.

The working of the comparison has to be seen. What is the strongest criterion that can be given for a thing's truth? Usually a proof from outside: a witness, a document, an observation.

The verse does not do this. It takes as its criterion the speech of the one addressed.

And that speech is chosen is no accident. Speaking is the thing a person doubts least:

• It cannot be doubted. A person cannot ask "am I speaking?"; to ask it he must speak.
• It needs no proof. The proof of speech is speech itself.
• It is repeated continually. Hundreds of times a day.
• And precisely for that reason it goes unnoticed.

The last item establishes the verse's link with the twenty-first: wa fī anfusikum — in yourselves. Speaking is the most everyday of the signs that are "in yourselves".

The twenty-third verse, that is, carries out the command the twenty-first gave: look at yourself, it said; and then it set the most ordinary thing in yourself as the measure.

I record this as my own reading. But that there is only one verse between the two, and that both are directed at the one addressed himself, is plain in the text.

The dispute in grammar. The grammarians differ over the case-role of the word mithla (an adjective, a circumstantial accusative, an adverb in the accusative; and the difference between reading it in the accusative and in the nominative). I do not go into the detail of this dispute, because it makes no difference to the sense, and because I cannot give the variant readings with certainty I write no names and no attributions.