al-Dhāriyāt 51:35-37

Fa-akhrajnā man kāna fīhā mina'l-muʾminīn · Fa-mā wajadnā fīhā ghayra baytin mina'l-muslimīn · Wa taraknā fīhā āyatan li'lladhīna yakhāfūna'l-ʿadhāba'l-alīm "We brought out those of the believers who were in it. And We found in it but one household of those who submit. And We left in it a sign for those who fear the painful punishment."

The most striking side of the narrative is here: the destruction is not recounted.

The messengers stated their task (33-34), and the thirty-fifth verse passes straight to the outcome: We brought out. The falling of the stones, the overturning of the city — none of it is told.

The Qurʾān recounts this narrative in detail in other sūras (Hūd 11/77-83; al-Ḥijr 15/61-77; al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/160-175). Here it closes in three verses, and two of the three speak not of the destruction but of those who were saved.

The sūra's economy requires this: what is recounted in this section is not the history of the people of Lot but the outcome of the messengers' second task.

And there is a break in the grammar.

Up to the thirty-fourth verse it was the angels who spoke (innā ursilnā, li-nursila). In the thirty-fifth the subject changes: fa-akhrajnā — "We brought out".

This "We" is no longer the angels. For in the next verse comes fa-mā wajadnā ("We did not find") and in the thirty-seventh wa taraknā ("We left") — and the sign left in the thirty-seventh is not the angels' doing but the text's own act.

The telling passes, that is, from the mouth of the messengers to the mouth of God, and the passage is not marked.

This is a form of the technique called iltifāt in Arabic (the shift in the direction of the address or of the narrator). It is widespread in the Qurʾān and has been recorded in many places in this commentary.

Its function here is this: the distance between the two verbs disappears. The messengers said "we shall send"; the narrative says "We brought out". Nothing at all comes between the command and the outcome — no time, no process, no resistance.

I record this as an observation about the structure.

And two verses in succession use two different words. This is a detail dwelt on since the classical period.

35: mina'l-muʾminīn — of those who believe 36: mina'l-muslimīn — of those who submit

There is a wide dispute in the classical sources over the difference between the two words, and the central text of that dispute is al-Ḥujurāt 49/14: "The bedouin said, 'We believe.' Say: 'You do not believe; say rather, we have submitted — for faith has not yet entered your hearts.'"

There, that is, islām is set down as a more outward category than īmān.

But in these two verses the same group is meant, and the two words look as though they had been used interchangeably. In the classical sources this is explained as the two words coming together in the same person: the same household has both believed and submitted.

I do not impose a preference and I do not go into the detail of this dispute; the relation between the two words cannot be settled without taking up the whole of the Qurʾān.

But this observation about the structure can be recorded: the thirty-fifth verse uses the word muʾmin with the verb of bringing out, the thirty-sixth uses the word muslim with the verb of finding. The one brought out is named by his inward state, the one found by his outward state. This is an observation, not a ruling.

And the number is frightening. In a whole city, one household.

The word bayt conveys both the building and the family inside it — as English "house" does in "the house of so-and-so". What is counted, that is, is not a building but a family.

And the Qurʾān records elsewhere that even this family was not complete: Lot's wife is among those left behind (Hūd 11/81; al-Aʿrāf 7/83).

And the word order of the verses sets up a sequence:

35: "We brought out those of the believers who were in it." — an operation is stated. 36: "And We found in it but one household." — the scale of the operation is given.

The thirty-sixth verse looks as though it were correcting the thirty-fifth: when "We brought out" is said, a crowd comes to mind; the second verse cuts that expectation off.

I record this as an observation about the structure.

And the section builds a circle with the sūra's twentieth verse.

Verse 20: wa fi'l-arḍi āyātun li'l-mūqinīn — in the earth there are signs. Verse 37: wa taraknā fīhā āyatan li'lladhīna yakhāfūn — We left in it a sign.

The same word, two different sources. The signs in the twentieth verse are part of creation; the sign in the thirty-seventh is part of history — what remains of an event.

And the recipient changes as well:

The difference in the second row is meaningful. The signs of creation address knowledge; the signs of history address fear.

I record this as my own reading. But the qualifications of the two verses are plain in the text, and they differ.

And the verb "We left" is concrete. As was recorded for Thamūd in the section on al-Shams: the caravan road from Mecca to Syria passed through these regions, and for the Qurʾān's addressees these were not distant legends but ruins seen along the road. The Qurʾān says this openly: "You pass by them in the morning, and by night" (al-Ṣāffāt 37/137-138).

The sentence "We left a sign", that is, is a claim the one addressed can verify.