ذَٰلِكَ أَمْرُ ٱللَّهِ أَنزَلَهُۥٓ إِلَيْكُمْ وَمَن يَتَّقِ ٱللَّهَ يُكَفِّرْ عَنْهُ سَيِّـَٔاتِهِۦ وَيُعْظِمْ لَهُۥٓ أَجْرًا
Dhālika amru'llāhi anzalahu ilaykum, wa man yattaqi'llāha yukaffir ʿanhu sayyiʾātihi wa yuʿẓim lahu ajrā
"That is the command of God; He has sent it down to you. And whoever guards himself against God, He covers his misdeeds for him and enlarges his reward."
ذَٰلِكَ — a demonstrative of distance. In al-Māʿūn two functions of this demonstrative were recorded (distancing/belittling, and visibility). Here there is a third function: gathering. The demonstrative gathers all the rulings before it into a single indication.
أَمْرُ ٱللَّهِ — and here the first sense of the word (command, order) is prominent. But the second sense in Arabic (affair, situation) stands behind it as well and will come forward at the end of the sūra.
This expression is striking. The Qurʾān generally uses the verb "to send down" for revelation, for the Book, for a verse. Here it is used for a legal regulation.
That is, the sūra puts the computation of the waiting period and the ruling about the dwelling into the category of "what has been revealed". This is a claim about the source of the ruling: these are not custom, not policy, not advice. They are in the same class as what has been sent down.
Root ن ز ل (n-z-l). The difference between the two patterns of this root (anzala / nazzala) was taken up in al-Baqara at 2/23 and in al-Qadr; I do not repeat that analysis. Here the إِفْعَال form is used: anzala — sending down all at once, in a single act.
إِلَيْكُمْ — "towards you". The particle ilā conveys direction: what is sent down has an address, and the address is the one addressed.
كَفَّرَ — root ك ف ر (k-f-r). This root was treated in al-Baqara and in al-Insān; I do not repeat those analyses. A reminder: the concrete sense of the root is to cover, to close over — a farmer is called kāfir because he covers the seed with earth.
And here the same root is used in reverse. Kufr is a person's covering over a truth he has seen. Takfīr (in this pattern) is God's covering over the misdeeds of a servant.
| Subject | What is covered | Result |
|---|---|---|
| A human being | The truth | Kufr — destroying |
| God | The servant's misdeeds | Forgiveness — saving |
This is one of the clearest symmetries in the Qurʾān's use of roots. Covering is in itself neither good nor bad; what is covered determines it. (The same structure was present between ʿaddada in al-Humaza and iḥṣāʾ in this sūra as well: counting too was a neutral operation.)
عَنْهُ — "from him". The particle ʿan conveys removal: the misdeeds are taken off the servant and covered over.
سَيِّئَة — root س و أ (s-w-ʾ): to be evil, to be ugly. From the same root sūʾ (evil), aswaʾ (worse), sawʾa (the part that must be covered). The word is the opposite of ḥasana (a good deed) and the two often occur together in the Qurʾān.
أَجْر — root أ ج ر (ʾ-j-r). And this word belongs to the commercial language of the sūra: ajr is the wage paid in return for work done. From the same root ijāra (hire), ajīr (a hired worker), ujra (fee).
The choice of the word is meaningful: the return is named not as a favour but as a payment that has been earned. And the same root will be used one verse later for a payment between human beings: فَـَٔاتُوهُنَّ أُجُورَهُنَّ (65/6) — "give them their wages."
This is one of the most striking word-pairings of the sūra. Two verses apart, the same root on two levels:
That is, the idea of payment works in two directions at once: from above downward and from person to person. And the word order sets the second immediately after the first.
I record this as an observation; I do not present it as a connection established in the classical commentaries. But that the two words are from the same root and stand this close together is the text's own datum.
يُعْظِمْ — root ع ظ م (ʿ-ẓ-m): to be great. The concrete sense of the root is bone (ʿaẓm); greatness is derived from the load-bearing of the skeleton. The tafʿīl form is causative here: to enlarge.