وَآخَرِينَ مِنْهُمْ لَمَّا يَلْحَقُوا بِهِمْ وَهُوَ الْعَزِيزُ الْحَكِيمُ
This verse is short and easily passed over. Yet it is here that the addressee of the sūra is settled.
The preceding verse told of a concrete event: to a particular community, a messenger was sent from among them. This verse makes an addition to that sentence, and with the addition the time of the sentence breaks open. The messenger turns out to have been sent not only to those present there but also to "others who have not yet joined".
That is, the four verbs of the second verse — he sent, he recites, he purifies, he teaches — cease to be a closed event.
Ākharīna is in the accusative. Yet the nearest candidate for it to be joined to, al-ummiyyīna, is in the genitive (on account of the particle fī). In Arabic, conjunction requires agreement of case. Direct conjunction therefore looks problematic.
| Solution | How it works | The resulting meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Ākharīn has been joined to the accusative pronoun (-him) in the verbs يُزَكِّيهِمْ / يُعَلِّمُهُمْ | Agreement is secured because the pronoun is accusative | "He purifies and teaches them and others who have not yet joined" |
| It is accusative by an implied verb: wa baʿatha ākharīna | A hidden verb is supposed in the sentence | "And He sent to others too" |
| The particle fī is counted as repeated in sense: wa fī ākharīna | Conjunction with respect to position | "And among others too" |
All three are mentioned in the classical sources. I adopt no preference among them; in terms of meaning all three come out at the same place. But this must be recorded: the first solution makes ākharīn directly the object of the three verbs — that is, the addressee of the works of reciting, purifying and teaching. This is the reading that best overlaps with what the verse says.
| Particle | What it says | Example |
|---|---|---|
| لَمْ (lam) | It did not happen. It gives no information about whether it will happen. | "He did not come." |
| لَمَّا (lammā) | It has not yet happened — but it is awaited. | "He has not come yet." |
The lexicographers note that lammā contains within it tawaqquʿ: expectation. What is negated with lammā is something hoped for and awaited. The English words "yet" and "still" carry this difference well: "he did not come" and "he has not come yet" are not the same thing. The second says that his coming is expected.
- Their not having joined is not a deficiency but a matter of time.
- Their joining is awaited.
- And this awaiting has been recorded by the verse itself.
يَلْحَقُوا — the root ل-ح-ق: to catch up with someone, to come up from behind and reach him. From the same root come lāḥiq (the one who comes later, the one attached) and ilḥāq (attaching). The concrete picture of the verb is this: a caravan going ahead and those trying to catch up from behind.
This picture is of the same family as the word tilāwa in the second verse. There too there was "going after". In two verses in a row the sūra uses the same movement: coming from behind. Going after the text, catching up behind the caravan. Both are verbs of following, not of getting in front.
| View | Its ground |
|---|---|
| Later generations — those who will come until the Day of Judgement | That lammā states time; the generality of the verse |
| Non-Arab peoples (the ʿajam) | Reading the caveat minhum as "of their kind, that is, of mankind" |
| The Arabs who had not yet entered Islam at that moment | The historical context |
Whichever of these views is preferred, the result stays the same, because all three say one thing: the set of addressees has not been closed.
Concerning this verse it is transmitted in the hadith collections that, when the Prophet was asked whom the expression "others" covered, he pointed to Salmān al-Fārisī. The report comes through chains found in al-Bukhārī and Muslim. I do not quote its wording in full here, because there are differences among the variants; but it can be recorded that reports to this effect exist. What the report does is not to narrow the scope of the verse but to show that the geographical and ethnic boundary has been lifted.
The caveat مِنْهُمْ works in the same direction. "Of them" — that is, those who join later are counted as belonging to the first caravan too; they do not form a separate class. To come later is not to stand lower.
In the first verse these two names occurred in the genitive, in the position of attributes describing the address of the tasbīḥ. Here they come in the nominative, in the position of the predicate of the sentence.
The difference is this: there no information was being given, an address was being described. Here a ruling is given directly: "He is al-ʿAzīz; He is al-Ḥakīm."
And the place of the ruling is meaningful. The sentence comes immediately after it has been said that the set of addressees will widen in time. The two names put that widening under guarantee:
- al-ʿAzīz — He has the power for this; He cannot be prevented.
- al-Ḥakīm — this is not an accident but an order.
The placing of pairs of names at the ends of verses in the Qurʾān generally works in this way: the names are not ornament but the support of the sentence.
Every community tends to produce a difference of degree between those close to the founding moment and those who join later. The early comers are counted "original", those who come after "an addition". The verse does not set up this distinction: those who will join later are minhum, that is, "of them". Inside the same set.
The second side is the particle lammā itself. If the judgement passed on someone who has not yet joined a community is not "he did not join" but "he has not yet joined", then the file on that person is not closed. This is a stance the verse establishes with a single word, and it can be generalised: to choose the form of a judgement passed on a person is to settle the space left to that person.