al-Jumuʿa 62:11

Wa idhā raʾaw tijāratan aw lahwan infaḍḍū ilayhā wa tarakūka qāʾimā. Qul mā ʿindallāhi khayrun mina'l-lahwi wa mina't-tijārati, wallāhu khayru'r-rāziqīn

"When they saw a trade or an amusement they turned towards it and left you standing. Say: what is with God is better than amusement and than trade. God is the best of providers."

This verse takes on the whole weight of the sūra. And the work it does is to turn the picture set up in the fifth verse upon its own first addressees.

Let us set them side by side:

Six verses earlier a community had been criticised for the relation it formed with the text given to it. Now the same sūra records the weakness of the community that listens to that criticism.

And the difference lies precisely in the form of the criticism. In the fifth verse a comparison is set up — there is distance, there is the third person, the ruling is harsh. In the eleventh verse there is no comparison; only what happened is told, and moreover the sentence of ruling is not a censure but a comparison of value (khayrun min — it is better).

This asymmetry needs to be seen. The sūra appears to treat its own community more gently. But what it does is heavier: it places them inside the picture they criticised. There is no need to set up a comparison, because the comparison was set up six verses earlier.

This is the sūra's real idea, and it is completed here: not carrying the book is the business not of those who have no book but of those who have one. The nearer the text, the more silent the breaking away from it.

There is something noteworthy in the word order. In the ninth and tenth verses the address was in the second person plural: fa's-ʿaw, dharū, intashirū, ibtaghū, udhkurū — "hasten, leave off, disperse, seek, remember."

In the eleventh verse there is a sudden shift to the third person plural: raʾaw (they saw), infaḍḍū (they broke away), tarakūka (they left you).

This is what is called iltifāt (a shift in the direction of address) in Arabic rhetoric. And the function of the change of direction here is worth dwelling on.

Two readings are possible:

The second fits the historical picture: the reports state that a group remained in the mosque. That is, in saying "they" it may be that not the whole congregation that received the command but those who dispersed at that moment are meant.

As my own reading I do not disregard the first either. That the Qurʾān should shift to the third person while recording the fault of its own community may be a form of avoiding exposure — indeed, as was recorded at al-Baqara 2/8, in cases of this kind the Qurʾān describes; it does not expose.

تِجَارَة — the root ت-ج-ر: buying and selling, trade. In the Qurʾān the word is used both in its literal sense (buying and selling) and in a metaphorical sense (deeds and their return).

In Sūrat al-Baqara the track of this metaphor was followed: at 2/16 "those who buy straying at the price of guidance", at 2/86 "those who buy the life of this world at the price of the hereafter", at 2/90 "how evil is that for which they sold themselves". As was recorded there: the Qurʾān passes into Mecca's own language; measure, the reckoning of profit, capital were notions belonging to daily speech.

And a finding recorded there falls exactly into place here: "The evil of the transaction lies not in the intention but in the price: what is near has been exchanged for what abides."

The same thing happens in this verse. Nobody is buying anything evil. A trading caravan arrives and people turn towards it. The problem is not in the transaction but in when the transaction is made.

Indeed the answering sentence of the verse is likewise in the language of trade: mā ʿindallāhi khayrun min… — "it is better", that is, it is a better price. The Qurʾān does not tell those who run to the caravan that trade is evil; it offers a better bargain. The argument is built in the addressee's own language.

لَهْو — the root ل-ه-و. This root was treated in detail at al-Takāthur 102/1 (alhākum); I do not repeat it here. The summary: its primary sense in the dictionary is to turn away from something, to move off from it, to occupy oneself with something else. The English rendering "amusement" is misleading; lahw is an occupation that holds a person back from his real business, that takes his attention from there and binds it elsewhere. At the centre of the word there stands not gaiety but displacement.

In the section on al-Takāthur it was further recorded: "lahw is the work of the heart. The body may be elsewhere; the question is where the attention is" (al-Anbiyāʾ 21/3).

This finding works directly in this verse. For what the verse describes is exactly the displacement of attention: the sermon is going on, people hear the sound outside, the attention slips, and then the body slips too.

There is a disagreement about what the word refers to. The reports transmit that the coming of the caravan was announced with the sound of a drum or a tambourine; on this footing lahw is that sound. According to another view lahw is any attention-catching amusement in general. I make no definite choice; the root of the word already covers both.

أَوْ — "or". Two things are counted separately, not the two together. This increases the generality of the verse: the cause may be trade, it may be amusement. What is common is the pull.

The root ف-ض-ض. Its concrete sense: to break a thing and scatter its pieces, to separate what is joined, to open what is sealed. Faḍḍa'l-khātama — he broke the seal. In the infiʿāl form (infaḍḍa) it becomes reflexive: to come apart of itself, to break in pieces, to empty out.

The picture in the word matters: this is not an orderly departure. It is the breaking and scattering of something that was standing together. The joining is undone.

Some of the lexicographers connect the word fiḍḍa (silver) to this root as well; the ground given is the metal's being separated and divided into pieces. This derivation is not certain; I record it but build nothing upon it.

In the Qurʾān this root occurs in three places, and all three concern the same circle:

Three verses use the same verb about the same community and give three different moods: it could have happened, it happened, it is wished to happen.

This is the most concrete verbal link between al-Jumuʿa and al-Munāfiqūn. In one sūra the congregation disperses of its own will; in the next sūra the same dispersal is set up as a plan from outside. That is, the weakness in al-Jumuʿa becomes a strategic target in al-Munāfiqūn.

And Āl ʿImrān 3/159 completes this picture: there the cause of the dispersal would have been harshness; here the cause is a caravan. The difference between the two shows with how small a thing a dispersal can occur.

Here there is a matter of word order much worked on in the classical commentaries.

Two nouns occur in the sentence: tijāratan (feminine) and lahwan (masculine). But the pronoun is singular and feminine: إِلَيْهَا — "towards it".

Why was a pronoun referring to both not used? The explanations mentioned in the sources of grammar:

The first explanation is the most widespread and agrees with the report.

But the answering sentence at the end of the verse reverses the order, and this is striking:

• In the first sentence the order is: tijāratan then lahwan.
• In the answering sentence the order is: mina'l-lahwi then mina't-tijārati.

That is, in the first sentence trade is named first, in the answer amusement is named first. This inverted symmetry may be looked at within the structure called laff wa nashr mushawwash (jumbled ordering) in Arabic rhetoric.

What is it good for? One reading is this: the first sentence gives the order of the event (the thing that really drew them was the trade), while the answering sentence gives the order of value (it begins with the lightest and rises to the heaviest). The answer begins "better than amusement" and ends "better than trade" — that is, the comparison begins with the weak rival and ends with the strong one.

I record this as my own reading; in the classical sources this reversal has been noticed and various explanations given.

The most visual sentence of the sūra. And its whole weight is in the last word.

قَائِمًا — the root ق-و-م: to stand upright, to be set up. The word is here a circumstantial qualifier: it states the situation at the moment the verb took place. "They left you in the state of standing."

The family of this root was treated in the section on Sūrat al-Bayyina: iqāma (to keep the prayer standing), qayyima (that which is upright), mustaqīm (the straight road). At the centre of the root there stand "being set upright" and "keeping upright".

And now the same root describes the posture of a man who has been abandoned.

Where is the force of the sentence? In three places:

One. The object of the verb is "you". The verse does not say "they left the prayer" or "they left the sermon". "They left you." What was abandoned is not an act of worship but a person. This takes the event out of being an abstract breach of a rule and makes it a concrete abandonment.

Two. The direction of the address. The sentence is said to the Prophet: tarakūka. That is, in telling the event the verse turns to the one wronged by the event. This shows what the text is recording: a rule was not broken; someone was left alone.

Three. The visuality of the word "standing". Picture a man who is speaking. Those in front of him get up and go. He remains standing — he does not sit down, he does not fall silent, but there is no one left to speak to.

This image forms a silent link with the donkey of the fifth verse. There a text was being carried but there was no receiver; here a text is being spoken but no listener remains. In both pictures the transmission is not completed.

A legal note. This expression is counted one of the proofs that the sermon is delivered standing. In the classical books of jurisprudence the ruling on standing during the sermon (whether it is a pillar or a sunna) is disputed among the schools of law. I take no side in this dispute; what the verse records is not a ruling but a state. The support of those who draw a legal conclusion is this word, but the word itself is not in an imperative mood.

مَا عِنْدَ اللَّهِ — "what is with God". Left indefinite: what it is, is not said.

This indefiniteness is the very technique of the last word of Sūrat al-Māʿūn. There māʿūn was left undefined, and it was recorded there: "Had the Qurʾān wished to define a word it would have defined it. The indefiniteness may be deliberate."

The same work is done here. One side of the comparison is very concrete (a caravan, the sound of a drum), the other side entirely indefinite. And the comparison is set up all the same.

عِنْدَ — "beside, with". An adverb stating place, but here it states ownership and presence. What was recorded for the expression jazāʾuhum ʿinda rabbihim at al-Bayyina 98/8 holds here too.

خَيْرٌ مِنَ — a comparison of superiority.

And the most striking side of the sentence is this: it lays down no prohibition. The verse does not say "trade is forbidden", does not say "amusement is forbidden". It puts two things in the balance and says that one weighs heavier.

This is the same structure as "dhālikum khayrun lakum" in the ninth verse. From beginning to end the sūra builds the regulation of the jumuʿa as a comparison, not as a list of prohibitions.

This has a practical consequence: a comparison requires the addressee to make his own choice. A prohibition is a thing to be obeyed; a comparison is a thing one must be persuaded of. The verse chooses the second road.

The root ر-ز-ق: the giving to a living thing of what it needs in order to live. Rizq is not what is earned but what is given; in the logic of the word itself there is a passivity.

خَيْرُ الرَّازِقِينَ — "the best of those who give provision". The construct states superiority within a plurality.

And here there is a question: does the verse say "there are others who give provision too"?

In the classical exegesis this question is asked and answered thus: the expression borrows the assumption present in people's daily speech, that they give one another provision (an employer, the head of a family, the person one trades with), and speaks from inside that assumption. That is, among all the intermediaries counted as "givers of provision", it is being said who the real one is.

And where the sentence is placed explains everything.

What produces the behaviour of people running to a caravan? Anxiety about provision. If the information about a famine recorded in the reports on the occasion of revelation is correct, the anxiety is real and justified. The verse does not disregard this anxiety, does not shame it, and does not make a promise such as "you will not go hungry".

The only thing it does is to recall the source. It makes a correction about where provision comes from: the caravan is a channel, not the source.

This is exactly the same logic as the answer of al-Munāfiqūn 63/7: there too the answer given to the plan of cutting off spending will be "to God belong the treasuries of the heavens and the earth". Two sūras answer two different anxieties about provision from the same place.