al-Wāqiʿa 56:39-40

Thullatun mina'l-awwalīn · Wa thullatun mina'l-ākhirīn

"A throng of the earlier ones, and a throng of the later ones."

The analysis of the words thulla and awwalīn/ākhirīn was made in the section on verses 13-14; I do not repeat it. What is to be treated here is not the words but the difference.

The number-verses of the two tables side by side:

There is only one word that changes: qalīl → thulla. The first column stayed the same, the second changed.

This is one of the quietest but most loaded differences in the sūra and is entirely verifiable: the two pairs of verses can be compared word by word, and the difference is in a single word.

Let us first separate out what the text says: among those who go ahead there are few from the later generations; among the men of the right there is a throng from the later generations too. No number has been given, no ratio; only two words of quantity have been set against one another.

What is said beyond this is interpretation and must be marked as such. In the classical exegeses this reading is widely made: the first rank — the rank of those who go ahead — thins with time; the second rank stays open.

As my own reading I add this, and give its ground from the text as well: the sūra is here separating a door from a summit. The summit is narrow and grows narrower with time. The door, on the other hand, is of the same width in both generations. The support for this reading in the text is that one word changes while the other stays fixed — what narrows, that is, is not the aṣḥābu'l-yamīn but the sābiqūn.

I enter one further note: no verdict such as "the later generations are bad" can be drawn from these verses. The text places the qalīl of the later generations in the rank of the sābiqūn, and puts the rest not in the Fire but in the rank of the right. What the verse does is not a reproach but a classification.

Both tables are sealed in the same way: the name of the group → the description → the number-verse.

In the third table (41-56) this arrangement will be broken — and the breaking will itself carry meaning: the left side has no number-verse. How many of them there are is not said. I shall take this up separately in its place.