al-Mumtaḥana 60:6

Laqad kāna lakum fīhim uswatun ḥasanatun li-man kāna yarjullāha wa'l-yawma'l-ākhir, wa man yatawalla fa-innallāha huwa'l-Ghaniyyu'l-Ḥamīd

"Assuredly, in them there is for you — for whoever hopes in God and the Last Day — a good example. And whoever turns away: God is indeed the Self-sufficient, the One worthy of praise."

The same expression comes back two verses later. In the Qurʾān a repetition as close as this is striking, and it always has work to do. Let us list the differences:

The differences form a system:

First: reinforcement. Laqad (lām + qad) together with a perfect verb is in Arabic a reinforcement with the force of an oath. The second occurrence is more insistent.

Second: the exception is removed. The exception laid down in verse four is not repeated here. This supports the analysis given above: the exception was a caveat belonging to the content of the exemplarity, and once that caveat has been laid down there is no need to repeat it. What remains in the second occurrence is the exemplarity itself.

Third — and most important: a condition is added.

لِّمَن كَانَ يَرْجُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ وَٱلْيَوْمَ ٱلْـَٔاخِرَ "For whoever hopes in God and the Last Day."

That is, the exemplarity does not work for everyone. What Abraham did — to part from his own people, from his own father — is not meaningful on a worldly reckoning. A person leaves the security afforded by his kin only on account of another security. If that reckoning is absent, the example ceases to be an example and becomes merely a story.

رَجَا — the root ر-ج-و: to hope, to expect. And the root has an interesting secondary sense: rajā also means the edge of a well or of a thing (arjāʾ — the edges; it occurs in the Qurʾān at al-Ḥāqqa 69/17). The bond between the two branches of the root is this: hope is standing at the edge of something you are not yet inside.

And the choice of the verb yarjū is striking too: it does not say "for the person who believes", it says "for the person who hopes". Hope is something different from faith; it is faith turned into a state. A person may say that he believes in something and yet expect nothing from it. The verse ties exemplarity to the second.

يَتَوَلَّ — the same root as the أَوْلِيَآء of the first verse: و-ل-ي.

This is the second knot in the backbone of the sūra. In the first verse the root had occurred not in the tafaʿʿul but in the iftiʿāl pattern ("to take as allies"); here it comes in the pattern تَوَلَّى and — as was seen above — this pattern runs both ways: to turn towards and to turn one's back.

Here the meaning is the second: to turn away. That is, to reject the example, to turn one's back.

And in the ninth verse the same pattern will come, this time in the first meaning: an tawallawhum — "that you should take them as allies". By using the same word in two different directions the sūra is in fact saying one thing: to turn towards one direction is to turn one's back on the other. This is why the word is counted among the aḍdād; both senses are two faces of a single movement.

The map of the root و-ل-ي in the sūra is this:

Four verses, one root. The sūra lays down its prohibition four times, always with the same root — and in none of them does it make the root of mawadda the object of the prohibition. This is the in-text proof of the distinction established at the first verse.

غَنِىّ — the root غ-ن-ي: to be without need, to be sufficient to oneself. Its concrete use: ghaniya bi'l-makān — he stayed in a place, he had no need to leave it. From the same root come ghinā (wealth) and istighnāʾ (to count oneself sufficient). The centre of the root is not "wealth" but needlessness; wealth is a consequence of it.

حَمِيد — the root ح-م-د. This root was analysed in detail in the section on al-Fātiḥa: ḥamd is not commendation (madḥ, which is done for involuntary things too), nor is it thanks (shukr, which depends on a favour reaching you); it is a word between the two, directed at a beauty brought about by will and not requiring that the favour should have reached you. And, as was recorded there, Ḥamīd is both the one who praises and the one worthy of praise.

That the two should come together is exactly right here. The context of the sentence is this: what happens if someone turns away? The answer is not a threat but a definition: God is ghanī — He has no need of your turning to Him; and He is ḥamīd — even if you do not praise Him, His worthiness of praise is not diminished.

That is, the verse does not say to the one who turns away, "you have lost God". It says "God has lost nothing". The difference between the two is on which side the loss lies.

This sentence-pattern is established in the Qurʾān: "And whoever is ungrateful — God is indeed Self-sufficient, worthy of praise" (Luqmān 31/12); "If you and everyone on earth were ungrateful, God is Self-sufficient, worthy of praise" (Ibrāhīm 14/8).