al-Taghābun 64:4

Yaʿlamu mā fi'l-samāwāti wa'l-arḍ, wa yaʿlamu mā tusirrūna wa mā tuʿlinūn, wa'llāhu ʿalīmun bi-dhāti'l-ṣudūr

"He knows what is in the heavens and on the earth; He knows what you conceal and what you make public. And God knows the very substance of the breasts."

The verse narrows knowing into three rings, and each ring is further inside than the one before it:

And note: in the first verse al-mulk (ownership), in the second baṣīr (seeing), here ʿalīm (knowing). The sūra counts off in order the powers of the one who keeps the account — owner, seer, knower. Without all three together no reckoning can be set up.

أَسَرَّ — root س ر ر: to conceal. From the same root comes sirr (what is hidden).

The root has an interesting side: from the same root come also سُرُور (surūr — joy) and سَرِير (sarīr — throne, couch). The lexicographers explain these derivations along different lines and there is no agreement among them; for that reason I do not build a link of meaning from here. I only record the word's relatives.

The verb asarra is in Form IV and is, strikingly, one of the aḍdād — that is, it can be used both for "he concealed" and for "he disclosed, he whispered". Here, because of tuʿlinūn facing it, the meaning is beyond dispute: to conceal.

أَعْلَنَ — root ع ل ن: to bring out into the open, to make public. The Turkish words alenî (open, overt), ilan (announcement) and ilanat (announcements) come from here.

The mentioning of the two together is an operation of addition. In Arabic, setting two contrary notions side by side (ṭibāq) is the way of covering the whole — to say "hidden and open" is to say "all of it". It is what English does with "sooner or later", "more or less", "high and low".

But there is an addition here: the ordering. First the hidden, then the open. This order is widespread in the Qurʾān and carries an emphasis: the hard case is stated first. Knowing the open is expected anyway; the real claim is knowing the hidden.

One of the densest constructs in the Qurʾān, and hard to translate.

ذَات — root ذ و: the feminine of dhū, which conveys possession. But when used inside a construct, dhāt leaves behind the sense of "possessor of" and comes to mean "the substance, the very self, the reality" of a thing. The philosophical term "essence" and the Turkish usage zatında ("in itself") come from here.

صُدُور — the plural of ṣadr: the breast, the cavity of the chest, the front part of a thing. From the same root come ṣadāra (precedence), ṣudūr (a thing's issuing forth), maṣdar (source). At the centre of the root stand the front part and the place of issue.

The meaning of the construct: not "the things inside the breasts" — that would be mā fi'l-ṣudūr, and the Qurʾān uses that expression too. The word chosen here is dhāt: the very self of the breasts, their substance, the thing they have as their own.

That is, what is known is not the passing thoughts that circulate in the breast; it is what the breast is. Not the intention that has turned into act, but the structure that produces intentions.

And this sets up a balance with the verse-ending of the second verse. There it said bimā taʿmalūna baṣīr — "He sees what you do". Here bi-dhāti'l-ṣudūri ʿalīm — "He knows the substance of the breasts". The difference between the two is the difference between two verbs: seeing looks outward, knowing looks inward.

Together the two verses set this up: in the reckoning there is both an outside and an inside. And this is the technical precondition of the idea of "coming off worse" in the ninth verse of the sūra — because in a transaction, establishing that one party came off worse requires that the real value of the goods be known. The sūra says here who it is that knows the real value.