al-Dhāriyāt 51:48

Wa'l-arḍa farashnāhā fa-niʿma'l-māhidūn "And the earth — We spread it out. And how excellent are We who made it ready!"

Root: ف-ر-ش. This root was treated in the discussion of al-Baqara 2/22; I do not repeat it. The summary of the finding there: firāsh means a bed, the root is "to spread, to lay out", and this expression does not say that the earth is flat — a bed is not flat either; it is spread, it folds, it follows the ground beneath it. What the word states is not a shape but a function.

And it was recorded there that the Qurʾān names the same function with other words too: mihād (a cradle, al-Nabaʾ 78/6) and dhalūl (a docile mount, al-Mulk 67/15).

And this root had occurred once more in the section on al-Qāriʿa: there the contrast was set up between firāsh (the bed that is spread) and farāsh (the moths that are scattered) — the earth is spread for man, and on that day men are scattered.

Two things are to be added here: the second word itself, and the pattern of praise.

Root: م-ه-د. And the word mihād named in the discussion of al-Baqara is from this root.

• مَهْد — a cradle. The Qurʾān uses it: "he will speak to people while in the cradle" (Āl ʿImrān 3/46; al-Māʾida 5/110).
• مِهَاد — a bed, a couch; and a spread-out ground.
• مَهَّدَ — he smoothed, he made ready, he spread and softened.
• تَمْهِيد — preparation, the making ready of a ground. The Turkish temhid comes from this.

And that mahd (a cradle) lies in the root is meaningful.

A cradle does two things: it carries and it rocks. Not a motionless ground, that is; a ground that has movement but does not disturb what is inside it.

This was recorded in the section on al-Nabaʾ in treating the word mihād; I do not repeat it.

And the use of the two words together adds a layer:

farashnāhā — We spread (ف-ر-ش: to lay out) al-māhidūn — those who make ready (م-ه-د: a cradle, to prepare)

The first verb conveys spreading, the second word making ready. The earth has not merely been spread, that is; it has been made ready for use.

I record this as an observation about the words.

نِعْمَ is in Arabic a fiʿl al-madḥ: a verb of praise. Its opposite is بِئْسَ (a verb of blame).

The peculiarity of the pattern is this: its subject is general, and the thing praised is most often dropped. Here the supplied form is: fa-niʿma'l-māhidūna naḥnu — "how excellent are those who make ready — We".

And the subject of the praise is God Himself. This is a usage found in the Qurʾān and it is striking: the sentence is not a servant's praise but the doer's own judgement about his own work.

Moreover a plural pattern is used (al-māhidūn) — the plural of majesty (naḥnu, innā) is widespread in the Qurʾān and has been recorded earlier in this commentary.

And there is a balance within the sūra:

Verse 47: wa innā la-mūsiʿūn — we are possessed of ample means. Verse 48: fa-niʿma'l-māhidūn — how excellent are We who make ready.

Both verses close in the same way: an active participle in the plural pattern, and the agent God. The sound agrees too (mūsiʿūn / māhidūn).

I record this as an observation about sound and structure.