al-Raḥmān 55:7-9

Wa'l-samāʾa rafaʿahā wa waḍaʿa'l-mīzān · Allā taṭghaw fi'l-mīzān · Wa aqīmu'l-wazna bi'l-qisṭi wa lā tukhsiru'l-mīzān

"And the sky He raised, and He set the balance · that you should not transgress in the balance · and perform the weighing with equity, and do not give the balance short."

One of the strongest ideas in the sūra — perhaps in the Qurʾān — is here. Three verses, and within them the word مِيزَان three times.

This subject has already been approached from two directions in this commentary: in al-Muṭaffifīn short measure (taṭfīf) and the background of precisely these verses was treated; in al-Qāriʿa the mawāzīn (the balances of the hereafter) were taken up. I do not repeat what was recorded in the two, and I rely on both below. The work to be done here is to unpack the verse's own word order.

The seventh verse carries two verbs, and the two are within the same sentence, joined by a single wāw:

رَفَعَهَا — He raised it وَوَضَعَ — and He set

The two verbs are each other's opposite. Rafʿ is raising; waḍʿ is setting, lowering, laying down. One thing upward, one thing downward.

And the verb waḍʿ comes once more three verses later:

وَٱلْأَرْضَ وَضَعَهَا لِلْأَنَامِ (10) — "and the earth He set down for the creatures."

The table comes out thus:

The balance stands between the sky and the earth — in the order and in the verb alike. The sky has been raised, the earth has been set down, and between the two the balance has been set.

I record this observation about the word order as my own reading; that the verbs and objects stand where they do in the verses is data of the text.

Now the real matter. The three occurrences of mīzān in the three verses stand in three different grammatical positions, and the sequence of the positions traces a descent.

What the three rows recount is this:

In the first row the balance is the object of a divine act — the thing set. In the third row that same balance is in a position to be the object of a human act — the thing given short. The middle row is the transition between the two: the balance is now a field, a place one stands inside.

The three verses thus bring the same word down from a cosmic position to a merchant's table. And they do it in three steps.

I record this as my own reading. The grammatical positions are beyond dispute and can be verified from any source of iʿrāb; the interpretation that the three positions form a descent is mine.

If one looks closely there is one further word in the ninth verse, and it is not mīzān:

وَأَقِيمُوا۟ ٱلْوَزْنَ بِٱلْقِسْطِ — "perform the weighing with equity."

وَزْن and مِيزَان are from the same root (و-ز-ن) but are different things:

• مِيزَان — as recorded in the section on al-Qāriʿa, it is a noun of instrument on the mifʿāl pattern (originally miwzān, the wāw having turned into yāʾ). The balance, that is, the instrument itself.
• وَزْن — it is a verbal noun. Weighing, that is, the act itself.

And the distribution of the imperatives is striking:

Two prohibitions, then, concern the instrument and a single command the act. The command in the middle, the prohibitions on either side.

I record this as an observation about the word order. And I add this reading as my own: the keeping of the instrument is said with two prohibitions and the doing of the weighing with a single command — because if the instrument is broken the command becomes impossible to carry out at all.

Root: ق-و-م. As recorded in the discussion of mustaqīm in the section on al-Fātiḥa: to stand, to be set upright, to be straightened. Qiyām, qawm, maqām, istiqāma are from the same root.

إِقَامَة (Form IV) — to raise a thing to its feet, to set it up, and from there to do it without deficiency, to make it continuous. In the section on al-Baqara this distinction was treated in the discussion of iqāmat al-ṣalāt: to "perform" the prayer and to "establish" it are not the same thing.

The same distinction holds here. The verse does not say "zinū" (weigh); it says "aqīmu'l-wazna" — raise the weighing to its feet. Weighing is thus not an operation but an order that has to be kept standing.

Root: ق-س-ط. This word was analysed in detail in al-Jinn, and the table drawn there completes this one. What was recorded there:

Qisṭ — a share, a portion; and from there justice. What is interesting about the root is its contrariety: qasaṭa = he corrupted the share, he deviated; aqsaṭa (Form IV) = he removed the deviation, he did justice. The root carries a single sense — to corrupt a share — and Form IV serves to undo that sense.

And in that section precisely this verse was given as an example of the settled use of qisṭ in the Qurʾān.

What is to be added here: the proper sense of qisṭ is a share. To say "weigh with equity" is therefore to say "give every man his share to the measure of his share". Justice here is not an abstract virtue but an operation of apportioning.

And the finding recorded for the word ʿadl in the section on al-Muṭaffifīn echoes here: the proper sense of ʿadl is equivalence, and ʿidl names the counterweight loaded on one side of a camel — the concept of justice itself, that is, arose from the image of a scale. The same conclusion holds for qisṭ: the word comes from the image of a division.

Root: ط-غ-ي. This root was analysed in full in al-ʿAlaq and was put to work in the sections al-Nāziʿāt and al-Layl. I do not repeat what was recorded there. The summary:

The proper, concrete sense of the root is water passing its limit, overflowing. The evidence is the Qurʾān's own usage: "When the water overflowed (ṭagha'l-māʾ), We carried you in the running ship" (al-Ḥāqqa 69/11) — there the word carries no moral sense whatever, only the water's passing of its bound. Ṭughyān is a being's passing of its own limit. Water becomes a flood when it passes its bed; flooding water is no longer water that feeds but water that destroys. The same water, in the same quantity, is life so long as it stays within its bed. And the emblem of the root in the Qurʾān is Pharaoh: "Go to Pharaoh; he has transgressed" (al-Nāziʿāt 79/17). The furthest point of ṭughyān is to put oneself in the position of a lord.

Now apply this definition to the verse and see what happens.

The word the Qurʾān uses for Pharaoh, for Thamūd, for the man who thinks himself sufficient, is used here for a man standing at a set of scales.

As recorded in the section on al-Nāziʿāt, the work that sūra does is "to turn the story of one person into an attribute": ṭaghā is used first of Pharaoh (79/17), then becomes a measure (79/37). al-Raḥmān turns the same word in another direction: it attaches the attribute to an operation.

And when the two texts are read together this comes out: to declare oneself a lord and to give two grams short on the scales are named by the same word in the Qurʾān's lexicon. Both are a passing beyond the limit; the difference between them is one of scale, not of kind.

This is the linguistic ground of the diagnosis made in the section on al-Muṭaffifīn, and it was pointed to there as well: that sūra said "the quantity does not change the name of the act". al-Raḥmān gives the name.

Root: خ-س-ر. This root was taken up in al-ʿAṣr and was treated together with this verse in al-Muṭaffifīn. What was recorded there:

Its proper sense is diminution and loss; and this sense has settled in Arabic particularly in the field of trade and weighing. The usual renderings have picked up an emotional colouring; the Arabic khusrān is a cold balance sheet. And the verb is of إفعال (Form IV): akhsara — to bring another to loss. In al-ʿAṣr man is inside the loss (fī khusr); in al-Muṭaffifīn man brings another to loss (yukhsirūn).

And here exactly the same verb occurs: لَا تُخْسِرُوا۟.

It was recorded in the section on al-Muṭaffifīn that these two verses (al-Muṭaffifīn 83/3 and al-Raḥmān 55/9) are together adduced as evidence for the root's settling in trade. What is to be added here is a difference of mood:

The last row matters. al-Muṭaffifīn says "they give short" and does not say what they give short. al-Raḥmān gives the object, and the object is surprising: what is given short is the balance.

You are not giving the goods short — you are giving the balance short. The word looks deliberately chosen, because what is in fact diminished is the goods; the verse says that what is damaged is the measure.

I record this as my own reading. That the object is al-mīzān is data of the text.

The أَلَّا at the head of the eighth verse is a combination of an + lā, and it is read in two ways:

There is a difference in meaning, and it is not small. On the first reading the balance was set for a purpose; on the second, the setting of the balance brought a command with it.

Both readings are defensible and I do not impose a preference. But I record this: the first reading presents the setting of the balance as an act of founding an order; the second as an act of address. And the sūra as a whole supports both — it both enumerates a cosmic order and speaks directly to the one addressed.

Now I come to why these three verses are among the strongest ideas in the sūra — perhaps in the Qurʾān.

This finding was briefly recorded in the section on al-Muṭaffifīn:

The verses name the balance in the same sentence as the raising of the sky. Mīzān is thus set down not as an instrument of trade but as a part of the order of the universe.

Here I need to unfold that finding, because the matter is not a comparison.

What the verse does is not a metaphor. A metaphor is the carrying of an image taken from one field into another: to say "justice is like a balance" is a metaphor. The verse does not say this.

The verse uses a single word and spreads that word across two fields at once. Between the mīzān of the seventh verse and the mīzān of the ninth there is no "like". The same word, wholly unaltered, descends from the sky to the marketplace.

The meaning of this is: the verse does not count the measure as two separate things standing in two separate places; it counts it as two appearances of one thing.

And this is completed by the finding recorded for the word ʿadl in the section on al-Muṭaffifīn:

The balance is not the metaphor of justice; it is the source of the word for justice. The man who breaks the balance is not breaking an instrument; he is breaking the model of justice itself.

al-Raḥmān carries this a step further: the man who breaks the balance is breaking something named in the same sentence as the raising of the sky.

And now something must be recorded that looks to the sūra as a whole.

The word ṭughyān occurs in the eighth verse: to pass beyond the limit.

And in the twentieth verse the sūra will use another word for the same idea, of the two seas: لَّا يَبْغِيَانِ — "they do not overstep against one another."

In the section on al-Muṭaffifīn the sūra's "words of limit" were gathered in a table: muṭaffif (he clips at the edge of the limit), fājir (he tears the limit), muʿtad (he crosses the limit), mīzān/ṭughyān (he overflows the limit). That table can be drawn for al-Raḥmān too, and it comes out wider:

And the conclusion that comes out of the table is this: in the sūra the ruling not to pass the limit is given for nature in the declarative mood and for man in the imperative.

The sun is by a reckoning — this is a statement. The seas do not overflow — this is a statement. But of man it is said "do not transgress" — this is a command.

The difference is this: man is the only being that can overflow. There is no possibility of the sea crossing the barrier; that is why what is set up about it is a description, not a prohibition. About man a prohibition is set up, because the possibility exists.

I record this as my own reading; the distribution of the moods is data of the text, and was shown in the table.

First: where the measure stands.

Today the concept of measure is fragmented, the exact opposite of the unity the sūra sets up. The laws of physics are one field, commercial law another, morality a third. The three have no common name.

The verse holds all three in one word. And this has a practical consequence: breaking the measure becomes visible not as a technical infringement but as a choice concerning the order itself.

Second: the keeping of the instrument.

It was recorded above: two prohibitions take the instrument as their subject and a single command the act. This distinction is especially sharp for today.

To make an error in an operation and to break the measure itself are different things. The first can be corrected; the second makes correction impossible, because correcting also requires the same instrument. If a set of scales weighs wrongly, no check made with those scales is of any use.

Its counterparts today are not confined to scales: when a measurement, an examination, an audit or a count is itself corrupted, every correction made in that field carries the same corruption. This is why the prohibition is placed on the instrument.

Third: the scale of transgression.

That the word ṭughyān is used both for Pharaoh and for the man at the scales is the most uncomfortable side of the sūra, and the discomfort is in place.

As recorded in the section on al-ʿAlaq: "transgression is not the possession of something bad; it is the carrying of something good beyond its own limit." The man who gives two grams short on the scales possesses nothing bad. What he possesses is an instrument, and the instrument is good. The one thing he does is to shift the limit of the instrument a millimetre in his own favour.

And the word puts that millimetre in the same pan as Pharaoh's sentence.