al-Qamar 54:36

Wa-laqad andharahum baṭshatanā fa-tamāraw bi'l-nudhur "He had indeed warned them of Our seizing; but they turned the warnings into a dispute."

Root: ب-ط-ش. This root was treated in detail in al-Burūj (inna baṭsha Rabbika la-shadīd, 85/12), and the description recorded there holds here too:

Baṭsh: to grip a thing violently and harshly, to fall upon it and seize it. The word describes the movement of the hand — clawing, snatching, taking hold and not letting go.

In the section on al-Burūj three elements of the word were enumerated and the first was suddenness: not a slow encirclement but a lunge. I do not repeat these.

What is to be added here is the pattern. The word comes here in the form بَطْشَة, that is, on the faʿla pattern: a single occurrence. The same pattern as ṣayḥa in verse thirty-one.

Al-Qamar, that is, names the destruction of both Thamūd and the people of Lot with the "single occurrence" pattern. In al-Burūj the same root came as a verbal noun, that is, in a form conveying continuity.

I record this as an observation about the pattern; the wording of the three verses can be verified.

The Qurʾān uses the same pattern once more: "The day We shall seize with the greatest seizing (al-baṭshata'l-kubrā)" (al-Dukhān 44/16).

The subject of the verb is singular: andhara-hum — "he warned them". Who? Lot.

And this is the only verb in the sūra of which a messenger is the agent.

The messengers' acts in the sūra are these: Noah prayed (10), Ṣāliḥ was commanded to watch and to be steadfast and to give notice (27-28), Lot warned (36). In all three accounts, then, what the messenger does is to convey or to pray — in none of them is there any use of force, any intervention, any producing of an outcome.

I record this as an observation; the verbs of the verses can be verified.

And the verb is on the pattern إِفْعَال (Form IV): andhara. The sense of the root ن-ذ-ر in this form is "to make known by way of a frightening report". The root was treated in al-Dhāriyāt, Nūḥ, al-Muddaththir and al-Mursalāt; I do not repeat it.

The root's turn within the sūra: immediately after the verb andharahum (he warned) comes bi'l-nudhur (the warnings). The same root twice in the same sentence: the act done and the name of the act done.

Root: م-ر-ي. And a caution is needed here: this root is NOT the root م-ر-ر of verse two.

The two roots are close in sound, distinct in sense:

I record this distinction explicitly, because the sūra's use of both invites confusion. A note of the same kind was made in the section on al-Ḥāqqa between wāhiya and wahn, and in the section on al-Qāriʿa between other pairs. I draw no meaning from the closeness in sound between the two roots.

The concrete sense of the root م-ر-ي: marā'l-ḍarra — to pull and squeeze the udder in order to milk it. And from this, figuratively: to pull a matter back and forth, to drag it this way and that, to wrangle over it.

Its derivatives:

• مِرْيَة / مُرْيَة — doubt. In the Qurʾān: "Be not in doubt concerning it" (Hūd 11/17; al-Sajda 32/23 — fa-lā taku fī miryatin minh).
• إِمْتِرَاء — to fall into doubt, to dispute. Maryam 19/34: "…the word of truth concerning which they fall into dispute."
• تَمَارِي — Form VI: to dispute with one another, to wrangle together.

The form in the verse is Form VI, and Form VI's conveying of reciprocity is fully functional here: tamāraw — they disputed with one another.

And this is the subtlest reaction the sūra describes, and it is worth dwelling on.

The reactions of the deniers are enumerated in the sūra:

The fifth differs from the others, and I record this as my own reading. Turning away, naming, objecting — all are open expressions of a stance. Tamārī, however, is not an open rejection; it is making the matter debatable.

And note what it is that is disputed in the verse: fa-tamāraw bi'l-nudhur. What they dispute is the warnings. A warning is turned into a subject of debate.

Form VI's reciprocity completes this: the dispute is conducted among themselves. Not with the warner, but with one another.

What this says to the present. The stance this verse describes is a less visible form of open rejection: to neutralise a warning, without rejecting it, by turning it into a topic. So long as the discussion goes on, no decision has to be made.

That last sentence is my own reading, and it is not a ruling but an observation drawn from the movement the word carries.