ذَٰلِكَ فَضْلُ اللَّهِ يُؤْتِيهِ مَنْ يَشَاءُ وَاللَّهُ ذُو الْفَضْلِ الْعَظِيمِ
The second verse had said that a messenger was sent to a community to whom no book had been given. The third added that this reaches those who come later as well. The question these two sentences naturally awaken is this: why them?
Once the question is asked, two answers can be produced. The first: "because they deserved it." The second: "because God so willed."
The verse chooses the second. And this choice closes the door on the first answer — and does so exactly where it needs to be closed. For had the first answer been accepted, the chosen community would have begun to see its chosenness as a right. And two verses later the sūra will pass to the description of a community that has done precisely this: those who say "we are God's friends".
That is, the fourth verse stands like a measure taken in advance against the disease of the fifth and sixth verses. So that the same error should not be repeated in the sūra's first addressees.
The root ف-ض-ل: a thing's exceeding what is necessary, excess, what is left over. From the same root come faḍla (a remainder), fuḍūl (superfluities, things not needed) and tafḍīl (to make superior).
The idea at the centre of the word is important: faḍl is what falls outside the calculated share. Not the return for what is deserved, but what is added on top of it. For this reason in Arabic faḍl and ʿadl are named as two matching notions: ʿadl gives what is deserved, faḍl gives more.
Accordingly what the verse says is this: messengerhood, and being its addressee, is not the payment of a debt. It does not rest on a reckoning.
And this finding pairs in an interesting way with the economic scene at the end of the sūra. In the tenth verse people will be told "seek of God's bounty" — the same word. Provision too is not the output of a reckoning but a surplus that is given. The sūra qualifies both revelation and provision with the same word: neither comes by being deserved, but by being given.
يُؤْتِي — the root أ-ت-ي: to come. In the ifʿāl form (ātā) it becomes "to bring, to give". That is, the verb "to give" in Arabic is derived from "to cause to come": the giver brings something to the other party.
مَنْ يَشَاءُ — this expression occurs often in the Qurʾān and is very often misread. There are two misreadings:
The first error: arbitrariness. The expression "He gives it to whom He wills" does not mean that the choice is haphazard. It is not the name at the end of this verse that closes this off — but الْحَكِيم at the end of the third verse does. The willing of one who possesses wisdom is, in the logic of the word itself, a bridled willing. The Qurʾān regularly places these two caveats side by side.
The second error: the lifting of responsibility. The sentence "God gives to whom He wills" does not mean that there is nothing for man to do. The Qurʾān uses the same structure both for giving and for a person's own choice; indeed at al-Shams 91/9-10 salvation and loss were tied directly to the person's own act (zakkāhā / dassāhā). These two kinds of sentence stand side by side in the Qurʾān, and the Qurʾān does not call for taking a side between them. As was recorded in the section on al-Muddaththir 74/54-56: the text places man shāʾa (whoever wills) and illā an yashāʾallāh (unless God wills) side by side, one verse apart, and counts both true.
Here too the same balance is kept. The verse says that the choice does not issue from man's reckoning — which is to say not that man's reckoning is unimportant but that the reckoning cannot buy the choice.
The sentence does not say "God is the possessor of bounty"; it says "God is the possessor of great bounty". The attribute الْعَظِيم qualifies al-faḍl (that it is in the genitive shows this), not God.
The nuance is this: what is qualified is not the greatness of the giver but the greatness of what is given. The verse is not describing God's majesty; it is describing the scale of the bounty.
And this suits the function of the verse. The sentence is not a boast but a statement of scale: what is in hand is great. The next verse will show how a great thing can be turned into a small load.
1. 62/1 — The state of the universe: tasbīḥ. 2. 62/2 — The intervention: the messenger and four works. 3. 62/3 — The scope: an addressee widening in time. 4. 62/4 — The caveat: this is a bounty, not something deserved.
And the fifth verse opens with a picture set directly opposite these four verses: a community to whom a book was given, and who did not carry it. That is, the sūra first establishes what the bounty is, and then shows what can be done with that bounty.