al-Ṣaff 61:5

Wa idh qāla Mūsā li-qawmihi yā qawmi lima tuʾdhūnanī wa qad taʿlamūna annī rasūlullāhi ilaykum, fa-lammā zāghū azāgha'llāhu qulūbahum, wa'llāhu lā yahdi'l-qawma'l-fāsiqīn

"And when Moses said to his people, 'O my people! Why do you hurt me, when you know that I am God's messenger to you?' Then, when they swerved, God made their hearts swerve. God does not guide the transgressing people."

The most striking link of word order in the sūra is here.

• 61/2: "يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ لِمَ تَقُولُونَ…"
• 61/5: "يَٰقَوْمِ لِمَ تُؤْذُونَنِى…"

The same interrogative particle, the same pattern of reproach, the same structure: address + لِمَ + imperfect verb. In the one the asker is God and the addressees are the believers; in the other the asker is a prophet and the addressees are his own people.

This cannot be coincidence. The sūra gives the example from history to its addressees cast in the same pattern as the question it puts to them. The example, then, is presented not as a distant story but as an older form of the same question.

And this determines the function of the example as well: a people's hurting its prophet and a community's not doing what it says are, within the frame the sūra sets up, deeds of the same family. Both are things done in spite of a piece of knowledge.

Root أ-ذ-ي. And the measure of the word is striking: a discomfort that is slight but continuous.

The Qurʾān does not use adhā for great calamities. The places where it does use it show this:

• The discomfort given by a thorn, an obstacle, on the road.
• A state of illness: "whoever among you is ill or has an adhā on his head…" (al-Baqara 2/196).
• And, strikingly: "They ask you about menstruation. Say: it is an adhā" (al-Baqara 2/222) — here too the word states not an illness or an impurity but a state of discomfort.

Adhā, then, is not deadly but wearing. It has continuity; it is not a great blow but something that comes drop by drop.

This makes Moses' complaint more intelligible. The complaint is not about a torture, an assassination, a rebellion. The scenes the Qurʾān transmits between Moses and his people fit this description: continual objection, continual excuse, "you and your Lord go and fight", the calf, "give us other food". None of them is deadly by itself; their sum is enough to wear out a prophet.

This is the centre of gravity of the sentence.

This construction, beginning with وَقَد, is a circumstantial clause: it states the condition under which the deed takes place. And the condition it states is this: knowingly.

This attaches to a definition set up in two places in Sūrat al-Baqara:

First, al-Baqara 2/6. In that section the root ك-ف-ر was analysed: the sense of the root is to cover — the farmer is called kāfir because he covers the seed with soil; the night is called kāfir because it covers everything over. And the definition that came out of it was this: kufr is not a failure to know; it is covering over what one knows.

Second, al-Baqara 2/89. There the verse "when there came to them what they recognised, they denied it" (fa-lammā jāʾahum mā ʿarafū kafarū bih) was treated, and it was recorded thus: "There is knowing, there is recognising, there is no acceptance."

al-Ṣaff 61/5 is the plainest expression of this definition — because here the "knowing" is not an inference but the verse's own wording: wa qad taʿlamūn.

And there is a difference worth dwelling on: the addressee at al-Baqara 2/89 was the one outside; the addressee here is Moses' own people.

That is, "covering knowingly" is not an attitude belonging only to the other side. Those inside do it too. This looks to the same place as the second verse of the sūra: there too the address was "O you who believe".

And now the second half of the verse. This sentence was used as evidence in the discussion of the seal at al-Baqara 2/7; the analysis there was this: the seal is not an obstacle placed in front of a person's choice, but a locking that comes as the result of the choice. I do not repeat that discussion here.

The work to be done here is different: to analyse the root fully. For the root itself adds something to the analysis given there.

Root ز-ي-غ. Its meaning: to deviate from the straight line, to incline, to go crooked.

Concrete uses show the measure of the root:

• زَاغَتِ ٱلشَّمْس — the sun inclined from its zenith. That is, it left its highest point and leaned over. This is an everyday observation and is used as the description of the noon hour.
• زَاغَ ٱلْبَصَر — the eye slipped, it strayed from the target. The Qurʾān uses this in two places: "The eye neither slipped (mā zāgha) nor overstepped" (al-Najm 53/17) — here in the negative, to say that the gaze held exactly in its place. And: "When the eyes slipped…" (al-Aḥzāb 33/10) — the gaze losing its focus in a moment of fear.

At the centre of the root is this: a departure from a line, a difference of angle.

And this is the most important property of the word: zaygh is not a sudden break but an inclination. The sun does not fall from its zenith all at once; it departs by a small angle, and that angle grows with time. The eye does not break from the target all at once; it slips.

This is what is added to the analysis at al-Baqara 2/7. There it was shown that the locking is the result of the choice. Here the root gives one further detail: the deviation that gives rise to the locking is small at the start. It is not a break but a bending. And the bending grows as the distance lengthens — a small difference of angle produces, at the end of the road, a great remoteness.

The Qurʾān uses the same root very plainly in these two verses:

"Those in whose hearts is a crookedness (zaygh) pursue what is ambiguous in it, seeking discord and seeking to interpret it." (Āl ʿImrān 3/7)

"Our Lord! Do not make our hearts swerve (lā tuzigh) after You have guided us." (Āl ʿImrān 3/8)

The second verse is especially important: the same verb, in the same ifʿāl form, occurs as a prayer. That is, the Qurʾān records protection from this locking as something that may be asked for. If a door has closed, it is understood that it was open before it closed, and that it could be asked to stay open.

Note the grammar of the verse. The same root, in two different forms:

And the connector between them: فَلَمَّا … أَزَاغَ — lammā is an adverb of time meaning "when, at the time that", and in Arabic it establishes a relation of cause and effect.

So the structure of the sentence fixes the order with certainty: first their deed, then God's deed. The analysis carried out at al-Baqara 2/7 by way of this ordering is here made necessary by the grammar itself.

This is a striking detail: using the same root, the Qurʾān sets two verbs side by side and shows the relation between them by the difference of form. What man does is to go crooked (intransitive); what God does is to make crooked (transitive). The second verb takes the object of the first — that is, the effect is mounted upon the cause.

فَاسِق — root ف-س-ق. And its concrete sense gives a very apt image: to come out of one's shell.

• فَسَقَتِ ٱلرُّطَبَةُ — the date came out of its skin, it split its skin.

From this comes fisq: to split the boundary of the order one is inside and come out of it. The fāsiq is the person who, while inside a structure, overflows out of it.

This root sense of the word overlaps with the context of the verse. What is at issue is not an enemy coming from outside but a community that has come out from inside. Moses' addressees are his own people.

And the choice of word here differs from kāfir. The kāfir is the one who covers; the fāsiq is the one who comes out. The two describe different deeds, and the verse chooses the second — because what is at issue is not covering over knowledge but overflowing outside a structure that is known.

And this closing will be repeated two verses later: 61/7 ends with "wa'llāhu lā yahdi'l-qawma'ẓ-ẓālimīn". The same skeleton, a different attribute:

The two verses name two different groups (the people inside / those who fabricate) with two different words; but the sentence of ruling is the same.