al-Taghābun 64:16

Fa'ttaqu'llāha ma'staṭaʿtum wa'smaʿū wa aṭīʿū wa anfiqū khayran li-anfusikum, wa man yūqa shuḥḥa nafsihi fa-ulāʾika humu'l-mufliḥūn

"So guard yourselves against God as far as you are able; and hear, and obey, and spend — that is better for yourselves. And whoever is guarded against the grasping of his own soul, those are the ones who attain deliverance."

The fifteenth verse made a statement of fact. This verse gives what that statement requires, in four commands:

1. ٱتَّقُوا۟ — guard yourselves 2. ٱسْمَعُوا۟ — hear 3. أَطِيعُوا۟ — obey 4. أَنفِقُوا۟ — spend

The order does not look accidental: an inner attitude (guarding), a receiving (hearing), a complying (obedience), a giving (spending). From inside outwards, from attitude to property.

And the fourth binds into the sūra's framework of trade: the last command is to spend property. The fifteenth verse had counted property a trial; the sixteenth verse says what is to be done with property.

The most discussed reservation in the sūra, and perhaps in all the verses of the Qurʾān on this subject.

Root: ط و ع. This is the very root of the verb aṭīʿū in the twelfth verse — and, as was recorded at the twelfth verse, at the centre of the root stands doing willingly and with ease.

The pattern: Form X (istaṭāʿa). That this form conveys seeking we recorded at the sixth verse (istaghnā); here another of its functions is at work: to find a thing, to be capable of it. Istiṭāʿa is the state of being able.

And the choice of the root sets up the logic of the reservation: ṭāʿa (doing willingly) and istiṭāʿa (being able) are from the same root. That is, the verse ties a thing that is to be done willingly to the limit of what can be done. The language itself has set up the link: work done voluntarily can be voluntary only as far as one's capacity reaches.

The mā in the sentence is maṣdariyya-ẓarfiyya: "to the measure of what you are able / for as long as you are able". Both are defended; the difference of meaning is small.

This reservation is the short expression of a mechanism already analysed in the corpus.

When the twentieth verse of Sūrat al-Muzzammil was treated the following was established, and I do not repeat it, I recall it:

"This shows how the lightening works: the act is preserved, the measure is stretched."

There the command was wa rattili'l-qurʾān (recite in measure); its lightened form became fa'qraʾū mā tayassara mina'l-qurʾān (recite what comes easily to you). The act stayed the same — reciting. What changed was how much was to be recited.

And there was one more finding there: "The ruling changes not by a request from the human being but by the lawgiver's own movement. The human being did not bargain, did not ask leave, did not offer an excuse."

Al-Taghābun 64/16 performs the same operation — but with a difference.

The difference is this: in al-Muzzammil the lightening is lived as a process; here it is laid down as a principle. Al-Muzzammil showed the measure by applying it; al-Taghābun declares it.

And this sentence recorded in al-Muzzammil binds the two texts together: "the adjustment of the demand to a person's condition is not declared as a rule, it is applied." Al-Taghābun 64/16 is the place where that rule is declared.

There is another command in the Qurʾān concerning taqwā, and it appears to be in tension with this verse:

يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ ٱتَّقُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ حَقَّ تُقَاتِهِۦ "O you who believe! Guard yourselves against God as He should rightfully be guarded against." (Āl ʿImrān 3/102)

In one place "as is His right", in another "as far as you are able". The two measures are not the same.

This is a matter openly debated in the classical commentaries and three main views are transmitted:

I do not impose a preference and I issue no ruling on the question of abrogation. This much I can say: the third view agrees with the general principle the Qurʾān lays down elsewhere — "God does not burden anyone beyond his capacity" (al-Baqara 2/286). And that verse was treated in al-Baqara.

This preference is not binding.

Root: و ق ي. This root was treated in detail in al-Baqara in connection with 2/2 (al-muttaqīn); I do not repeat it here.

A one-sentence reminder: taqwā is not fearing but guarding oneself; inside the word there is a shield (wiqāya — protection). And this measure recorded there holds here too: "The muttaqī is not the fearful one; he is the attentive one."

This will be needed for the second half of the verse.

Two verbs one after the other, and their order is meaningful: first hearing, then obedience.

In Arabic samiʿa is not merely the ear's taking in a sound; it means also to hear and accept, to lend an ear. Indeed in the expression samiʿa'llāhu li-man ḥamidah, which occurs in the context of al-Fātiḥa as well, samiʿa means not "He heard" but "He accepted".

And this pair is mentioned in the Qurʾān together with its opposite: samiʿnā wa aṭaʿnā (we heard and we obeyed) and samiʿnā wa ʿaṣaynā (we heard and we disobeyed). The difference between the two is after the hearing — the hearing is common, the outcome different.

In al-Mulk there was an important finding about this root, and it connects here: there the expression law kunnā nasmaʿu aw naʿqilu in al-Mulk 67/10 was treated and the following was recorded — "not 'and' but 'or': two independent channels of deliverance, both of them closed." That is, hearing is counted one of the channels of deliverance.

أَنفِقُوا۟ — root ن ف ق. The concrete sense of the root is interesting: nafaqa is a thing's being used up, coming to an end, going out of one's hand. From the same root come نَفَق (nafaq) — an underground tunnel, a burrow (nāfiqāʾ is the field-mouse's escape hole); and نِفَاق (nifāq) — hypocrisy, that is, entering from one side and going out at the other.

That is, infāq is letting property go out of one's hand. Inside the word there is a diminishing — and the seventeenth verse will turn exactly this diminishing round.

خَيْرًا لِّأَنفُسِكُمْ — a point of grammar. Khayran is in the accusative and there are several explanations for this in grammar: the object of a deleted verb (understood as iʾtalū khayran), or the predicate of an omitted subject (understood as yakun khayran). The detail does not change the meaning here.

What does change the meaning is the expression لِّأَنفُسِكُمْ: "for yourselves".

This is a reservation that turns the direction of spending round. Spending is to all appearances done for another; the verse says that it belongs to the one who does it. And the choice of word reinforces this: li-anfusikum — "for your souls".

And here there is a move built at the level of the word. It needs seeing.

The verse had begun with ٱتَّقُوا۟ — from the root و ق ي, imperative, active: guard yourselves.

The verse ends with يُوقَ — the same root, imperfect, passive: if he is guarded.

What the verse says is this: you were commanded to guard yourselves, and you were asked to guard yourselves as far as you are able. But to be guarded against the grasping of the soul — that is something done to you.

This is not a detail of grammar; it is the verse's centre of meaning. A sentence that begins with a command ends with a passive verb. The human being strives; but the crossing of the hardest obstacle is given to him.

And this asymmetry appears elsewhere in the Qurʾān too. The finding recorded in al-Baqara in connection with 2/37 has the same structure: "Adam does not find the words of repentance himself; he receives them from his Lord… The door of repentance is not opened by the effort of the one who repents; it has already been left open."

I record this as an observation. That the two verbs are from the same root and in opposite voices is a datum of the text; the conclusion I draw from it is interpretation and is not binding.

Root: ش ح ح. It is usually rendered into English as "miserliness", but the word differs from bukhl (stinginess) and the difference is important.

The distinction the lexicographers record is this:

That is, shuḥḥ is miserliness joined with greed: closing the hand and opening the eye at once. For this reason the word is more comprehensive than bukhl — bukhl looks at the act, shuḥḥ at the structure that produces the act.

And the construct confirms this: شُحَّ نَفْسِهِ — "the shuḥḥ of his soul". The miserliness is attributed not to the person but to the soul. That is, the verse counts this not a defect coming from outside but a tendency present in the human being's own structure.

This has a link with the analyses of the soul treated in al-Shams and al-Layl; I do not repeat the findings there.

Root: ف ل ح. And the concrete sense of the root sets the word in a quite different place: to split, to cleave open.

Falaḥa'l-arḍa — he split the soil, he ploughed it. فَلَّاح (fallāḥ) — a farmer; the English word fellah comes from here. The farmer splits the soil, because a seed can find room only in soil that has been split.

The pattern: Form IV, active participle (mufliḥ). Aflaḥa — he attained deliverance, he reached what he sought.

The root's passage from "splitting" to "deliverance" is explained by the lexicographers thus: whoever splits through an obstacle reaches his goal. Deliverance is the opening of the blockage in front of one.

And this root belongs to the same family of images as the roots ف ك ك (untying a bond) and ب ي ن (opening a gap) treated in al-Bayyina: in all of them there is an opening.

Look at where it stands in the verse: deliverance is given to the one guarded against the shuḥḥ of his soul. That is, what is split — the blockage that is opened — is the closedness of the hand. The concrete sense of the word and the subject of the verse fit each other exactly: the tightly closed hand is the hard soil that must be split.

I record this as an observation; I am not transmitting it from a classical commentary.

Word order: فَأُو۟لَٰٓئِكَ هُمُ ٱلْمُفْلِحُونَ. Three reinforcements one on top of another: the demonstrative (ulāʾika), the pronoun of separation (hum), and the definite article (al-mufliḥūn). In Arabic this triad sets up restriction: "those who attain deliverance are they and they alone."