عَالِمُ الْغَيْبِ وَالشَّهَادَةِ الْعَزِيزُ الْحَكِيمُ
The sūra ends not with a command but with a list of names. And the list gathers up and seals the attributes introduced in the first four verses of the sūra.
ٱلْغَيْب — root غ ي ب: to disappear from sight, to be covered, not to be present. Ghāba — it set, it disappeared; ghaybūba, absence. This root was treated in al-Baqara in connection with 2/3 (yuʾminūna bi'l-ghayb); I do not repeat it here.
ٱلشَّهَٰدَة — root ش ه د: to be present, to see, to bear witness. Shāhid is the one present; mashhad the place seen; shahāda the reporting of what one has seen.
The two words are exact opposites: one is what is not present, the other what is present. In Arabic setting two opposites side by side (ṭibāq) covers the whole — to say "hidden and open" is to say "all of it".
| 64/4 | 64/18 |
|---|---|
| mā tusirrūna — what you conceal | al-ghayb — what is unseen |
| mā tuʿlinūn — what you make public | al-shahāda — what is seen |
| ʿalīmun bi-dhāti'l-ṣudūr | ʿālimu'l-ghaybi wa'l-shahāda |
The difference is one of scale. In the fourth verse the hidden and the open were a person's acts; here they are the whole of existence. The sūra applies the same duality first to the human being, then to the universe.
Taghābun — coming off worse — can be established only on one condition: that the true price be known. You realise that you came off worse in a transaction only when you learn the real value of the goods. One who does not know the price does not know that he came off worse either.
And the ninth verse had declared that day "the day on which the loss is understood". For this to be possible, there must be, on that day, someone who knows the true price.
That is, the last verse of the sūra is the technical precondition of the claim that carries the sūra's name. The reckoning of a loss in a bargain can be kept only by one who sees both sides.
I write this as my own reading. This relation between the two verses has been drawn from the structure of the text; I am not transmitting it from a classical commentary.
And thought of within the metaphor of exchange, this detail falls into place too: in a transaction a person sees only the shahāda — the visible price, what can be handled, what can be counted. The ghayb side is closed to him. This is exactly the source of the loss described in the ninth verse: setting a price with incomplete information.
ٱلْعَزِيز — root ع ز ز. The concrete sense of the root is hardness, firmness, not wearing away. Arḍ ʿazāz — hard, barren ground. From this two senses come out: to prevail (ʿizza) and to be rare, hard to come by (ʿazīz — a thing's being seldom found).
That is, ʿazīz is not the exact equivalent of the word "powerful". Inside it there are unbreakability and rarity: the one not overcome, not worn away, and whose like is seldom found.
ٱلْحَكِيم — root ح ك م: the concrete sense of the root is to restrain, to bridle; ḥakama is a horse's bridle — the instrument that keeps the animal on the right road. From this come ḥukm (a binding decision), ḥikma (putting a thing in its proper place), ḥākim.
Ḥakīm can mean both "the one who judges" and "the possessor of wisdom"; the faʿīl pattern is open to both.
- ʿAzīz by itself: irresistible power. This is a picture open to arbitrariness.
- With ḥakīm added: power works together with a measure that puts things in their proper place.
And this pair is the counterpart at the sūra's end of the pair lahu'l-mulku wa lahu'l-ḥamd in the first verse: there too power (dominion) and worth (praise) were set side by side. The sūra sets up the same balance twice, at its opening and at its close.
And one last detail: the sūra does not end with a command. The seventeenth verse was a conditional sentence; the eighteenth verse is names only. That is, the sūra's last word is not a demand but an introduction. Everything that is asked has been said; what remains is before whom it is done.