يَسْـَٔلُهُۥ مَن فِى ٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتِ وَٱلْأَرْضِ كُلَّ يَوْمٍ هُوَ فِى شَأْنٍ
| Verse | Verb | Who | What |
|---|---|---|---|
| 29 | يَسْـَٔلُهُۥ — they ask of Him | Everyone in the heavens and the earth | Asking |
| 39 | لَا يُسْـَٔلُ عَن ذَنۢبِهِۦٓ — he is not questioned about his sin | Men and jinn | Being asked |
The same root, ten verses apart, in two opposite positions. In the twenty-ninth verse the created ask; in the thirty-ninth they are not asked.
And the verb is imperfect, conveying continuance: yasʾaluhu — "they ask, they are asking". An unbroken state of request.
مَن — again the particle used of those possessed of reason, just as in verse 26. But here the scope is explicitly widened: "in the heavens and the earth".
شَأْن — root ش-أ-ن. This root was treated in ʿAbasa, and precisely this verse was given there as an example. What was recorded there:
State, business, condition, a matter of importance. The Turkish words şan and şe'niyet are borrowings from this root. … That the word comes indefinite is for magnification: "such a concern that…". It is not defined, its boundary is not drawn.
And here too the word is indefinite: فِى شَأْنٍ — "upon some task". The indefiniteness does the same work: the task is not named, not bounded.
One. Kulla yawmin has been brought forward. In Arabic an element brought forward conveys emphasis or restriction; here the fronting of the adverb of time stresses continuance: every day, without exception.
Two. The sentence is a nominal one: huwa fī shaʾn — "He is upon some task". There is no verb. Again thubūt: this is not something He does but a condition He is in.
What the verse says: the divine act continues without interruption. The idea of a god who sets things up and withdraws, which the Qurʾān rejects elsewhere, is excluded here too. The finding recorded for the name Rabb in the section on al-Fātiḥa is the same:
The name Rabb excludes the idea of a God who sets things up and withdraws. Nurture is not a work done once and finished; it requires continuance. … Rabb is the name of an order that is working; not of a clock that has been wound and abandoned.
What the verse does not say: that God Himself changes. In the classical tradition of theology this distinction has been scrupulously kept: what changes are His works, not His Essence. The verse does not say "every day He is someone else"; it says "every day He is upon some task". The subject of the sentence is He, its predicate a position.
The things listed in the classical commentaries as to what the "shaʾn" is are these, and they are an illustration, not a limitation: to give life, to give death, to give, to take, to raise, to lower, to forgive, to requite.
And note: all of these come in opposed pairs. The weave of pairs running through the whole sūra appears here too.
There is no connective between the two sentences of the verse, and this establishes a relation between them.
The link is this, and it is often drawn in the classical commentaries: the requests are unceasing; the response is unceasing too. The verse sets countless tasks over against countless requests.
And there is one further reading that comes out of this, which I record as my own reading: the sūra has been recounting a fixed order from the start — the sun runs by a reckoning, the balance has been set, the sea does not pass its limit. This verse says that that fixity is not stillness. The order does not err, but the owner of the order is not motionless.