يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا تُوبُوا إِلَى اللَّهِ تَوْبَةً نَّصُوحًا عَسَىٰ رَبُّكُمْ أَن يُكَفِّرَ عَنكُمْ سَيِّئَاتِكُمْ وَيُدْخِلَكُمْ جَنَّاتٍ تَجْرِي مِن تَحْتِهَا الْأَنْهَارُ يَوْمَ لَا يُخْزِي اللَّهُ النَّبِيَّ وَالَّذِينَ آمَنُوا مَعَهُ نُورُهُمْ يَسْعَىٰ بَيْنَ أَيْدِيهِمْ وَبِأَيْمَانِهِمْ يَقُولُونَ رَبَّنَا أَتْمِمْ لَنَا نُورَنَا وَاغْفِرْ لَنَا إِنَّكَ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَيْءٍ قَدِيرٌ
Yā ayyuha'lladhīna āmanū tūbū ila'llāhi tawbatan naṣūḥā, ʿasā rabbukum an yukaffira ʿankum sayyiʾātikum wa yudkhilakum jannātin tajrī min taḥtiha'l-anhār, yawma lā yukhzi'llāhu'n-nabiyya wa'lladhīna āmanū maʿah, nūruhum yasʿā bayna aydīhim wa bi-aymānihim yaqūlūna rabbanā atmim lanā nūranā wa'ghfir lanā, innaka ʿalā kulli shayʾin qadīr
"O you who believe! Turn to God with a sincere, unmixed repentance. It may be that your Lord will cover over your evil deeds and admit you into gardens beneath which rivers flow — on a day when God will not disgrace the Prophet and those who believed with him. Their light runs before them and on their right. They say: 'Our Lord! Complete for us our light and forgive us. Surely You have power over all things.'"
The root ت و ب (t-w-b) was taken up at al-Baqara 2/37; I do not repeat that analysis. In one sentence: the sense of the root is to turn, and the same root is used both of the servant and of God — the servant tāba ila'llāh, God tāba ʿalayh; and God's turning comes before the servant's turning.
In the fourth verse this root came in the conditional (in tatūbā); here it comes in the imperative (tūbū), and the addressees are all the believers.
What is new here is not the root itself but the adjective attached to it. The word tawba occurs in many places in the Qurʾān; this is the only place where it is qualified by نَصُوح. This calls for the word to be examined separately.
Root ن ص ح (n-ṣ-ḥ). This root has two separate branches in Arabic. Both are recorded in the classical dictionaries, both fit this verse, and the picture that emerges when the two are read together explains the word completely.
The clearest use of this branch of the root is for honey: نَاصِح العَسَل (nāṣiḥu'l-ʿasal) — pure honey, entirely separated from its wax, its comb, its admixture.
From this comes the sense nuṣḥ (sincere counsel). And the way it comes out is this: counsel counts as naṣīḥa only when it has been purified of the counsellor's own interest. If there is a reckoning inside it, that honey is adulterated.
This shows the original sense of a word that has narrowed. The usual English rendering, admonition or preaching, has taken on the colour of a long and tiresome lecture; the centre of the Arabic word is purity. Counsel is speech from which the giver has taken out his own share.
The Qurʾān uses this sense plainly: the prophets, addressing their peoples, say "I am giving you counsel" (anṣaḥu lakum), and immediately afterwards there most often comes the note "I ask of you no wage". The two sentences stand side by side, because the second is the condition of the first.
- نِصَاح (niṣāḥ) — sewing thread.
- مِنْصَحَة (minṣaḥa) — a sewing needle.
- نَصَحَ الثَّوْبَ — he sewed the garment, he closed its tear.
There is a difference between a tear and a stain. A stain is on the surface; it is wiped, washed, covered over. A tear, however, is a break in the cloth itself — covering it does not remove it, because the problem is not on the surface but in the fabric.
And note what a stitch does: a stitch does not abolish the tear. In sewn cloth the mark of the stitching remains; the tear is where it was, but it no longer opens. The cloth is whole again and can be used again.
First: repentance does not make what happened not to have happened. A mark remains. The Qurʾān says this already — it says "He will cover over your evil deeds" (yukaffira ʿankum), it does not say "He will abolish them". To cover over is to close what happened; not to make it not to have happened.
And a stitch requires labour: a needle, thread, time, attention. A tear does not close by itself. The weight the adjective naṣūḥ adds lies here: the word adds to repentance a quality of effort.
The joining of the two branches. I record this as an observation: the two branches, though they look unrelated at first sight, come out at the same place. Pure honey is what has had the admixture separated out; sewn cloth is what has had the separated joined together. Both are an operation of separating and joining. In the classical dictionaries the two branches are given under separate entries and no necessary link is drawn between them; for that reason I write this not as an etymological claim but as the falling of two senses together into the verse.
And the root has one further branch: the word nuṣḥ is used in Arabic also in the sense of "wanting someone's good, wishing well for him". On this reading tawbatan naṣūḥā becomes "a repentance a person makes wanting his own good". This explanation too occurs in the classical sources.
The word naṣūḥ is of the faʿūl pattern. And this pattern in Arabic generally carries an active sense (an intensive active participle): one who does much, who does continually. Example: ghafūr (much forgiving), shakūr (much thanking).
The problem is this: tawba is a verbal noun, and verbal nouns cannot be "counsel-giving". That is, the adjective looks incongruous with what it describes.
| Explanation | Account |
|---|---|
| The adjective has been given to the repentance figuratively | In reality it is the person who counsels; the adjective has been transferred to the person's act. This is a common usage in Arabic (like a fasting day, a praying night). |
| The adjective belongs to the person and is implied | It means "the repentance of a person who counsels his own soul". |
| The faʿūl pattern here means "pure, unmixed" | If the first branch of the root (pure honey) is taken as the basis, the active sense of the pattern is not required: "an unmixed repentance". |
| Repentance is a repentance that counsels its owner | That is, a repentance that moves the person never to return to it. The adjective stays in its real sense; what counsels is the repentance itself. |
But I content myself with recording a beautiful side of the fourth explanation in point of meaning: if repentance is a thing that counsels its owner, then repentance becomes not a closing but a beginning — not something that turns back and closes the matter, but something that goes on speaking forward. I write this as a possibility of reading; not as a preference.
Root ك ف ر (k-f-r). This root was taken up at al-Insān 76/3 and in al-Baqara; I do not repeat it. In one sentence: the sense of the root is to cover, to close over — the farmer is called kāfir, because he covers the seed with earth.
- Kufr: the servant's covering over what has been given to him.
- Takfīr (as in this verse): God's covering over the servant's evil deeds.
The same verb, the same form (tafʿīl), two different subjects — and entirely opposite values. Covering becomes, according to who covers and what is covered, either the greatest ingratitude or the greatest mercy.
I record this as an observation. It is an example of a fact that has met us many times regarding the Qurʾān's economy of words: the same root changes value according to its position.
And here there is a striking point. The verse commands repentance (tūbū — imperative), but it does not make the outcome certain (ʿasā — it may be that). That is, the obligation is certain, the recompense hopeful.
This asymmetry is meaningful and says something: repentance is not a transaction that buys the outcome. The servant does what falls to him; the outcome is in the hands of the other party. This looks to the same place as the question of riḍā treated at the last verse of al-Bayyina — a deed is not a payment but an attempt at approach.
Root خ ز ي (kh-z-y): to be disgraced, to be left in shame, to be brought low. Khizy — disgrace, abasement.
What the word carries is a state fallen into before others. That is, not merely a pain; a pain undergone while being seen.
And the choice of this word brings out the social dimension of the scene. The resurrection is often described in the Qurʾān as a place where everyone is together; and part of what is undergone there is being seen.
The sentence of the verse is built negatively: lā yukhzī — He will not disgrace. The expected form could have been positive: "He will exalt", "He will honour". The negative form has been chosen.
This has an effect: the sentence names the thing feared and abolishes it. That is, the assurance given to the one addressed is not something he will have; it is something that will not happen to him. This is a form of consolation closer to human psychology — because a thing feared is not consoled until it is named.
يَسْعَىٰ — root س ع ي (s-ʿ-y): to walk fast, to run, to run about after a task. The saʿy of the pilgrimage is from this root, and the Turkish mesai (working hours) is a borrowing from it.
The verb has been chosen strikingly. The verse does not say "their light is before them", it does not say "their light lights them". It says "their light runs".
That is, the light is not a standing source of illumination; it is something that moves. And the direction of its movement is in front of its owner.
Bi-aymānihim — "on their right side". And here the root ي م ن treated at the second verse comes back: there aymān meant "oaths", here the same plural form means "right sides". In the same sūra, six verses apart, the same word in two different senses.
I record this not as a claim of wordplay but as an indication of the root's liveliness: Arabic keeps the link between "the right hand" and "a word given" inside the word, and this sūra uses both.
The mention of the right side comes from the same symbolic field as the distinction between aṣḥāb al-yamīn and aṣḥāb al-shimāl treated in al-Ḥāqqa; I do not repeat that discussion.
Note: a scene like this one is recounted in Sūrat al-Ḥadīd as well, and there the hypocrites' asking for light and not receiving it is added. The scene here is shorter and the other party is not mentioned.
The situation is this: the light has already been given. The verse says so: nūruhum yasʿā — their light runs. The scene is a scene in which the light is present.
That is, they ask that what is in their hands be completed. They make a request although they possess it.
أَتْمِمْ — root ت م م (t-m-m): to be complete, to be without lack. Itmām — completion. The word asks that the remaining part of something incomplete be given.
That is, inside the prayer there is an admission: the light given is incomplete. And this admission is the most striking side of the scene — a confession of lack even at the moment of salvation.
In the classical commentaries several explanations are given for this prayer: the light's diminishing as one advances on the bridge, or each believer's light being in the measure of his deeds and his asking for more. These explanations rest on reports and there are differences among them; I prefer none of them.
But what follows from the structure of the prayer stands independently of the explanations, and I record it:
The light has been given and is still asked for. This is a form of asking and its counterpart in this world is direct: not counting what one has as enough, but not denying that one has it either. The prayer does not say "give us light" — that would be to treat what was given as nothing. It says "complete our light" — it owns what was given and asks for its continuation.
And immediately afterwards: وَاغْفِرْ لَنَا — "forgive us". A request for forgiveness from the mouths of people who have entered the garden. This too is part of the same attitude.
A link: the finding recorded in al-Bayyina — that at the summit of the reward there is placed not an object but a relation — appears here in another form. The scene gives the moment of salvation as a moment of speech. Those who are saved do not fall silent; they ask. The relation continues.
The length and structure of the verse. This is the longest verse of the sūra and it houses more than one scene within it: a command (repent), a promise (He covers, He admits), a note of time (on that day), a description (the light runs), and a prayer (complete).
1. Command — now, to the one addressed. 2. Hope — the near future, the outcome. 3. That day — the far future, the scene. 4. Description — the inside of the scene. 5. Prayer — the mouths of the people in the scene.
That is, the verse begins with a command and carries the one addressed step by step to the moment in which the consequence of that command is lived, and at the very end speaks from his mouth. At the end of the verse the one addressed hears his own voice.
This technique was seen in the discussions of al-Ḥāqqa and al-Maʿārij too: the reading out to the one addressed of his own sentence in the scenes of the resurrection.
The common conception of repentance is emotional: to feel remorse, to grieve, to resolve not to do it again. These are necessary but they do not sew a cloth.
The image of sewing adds this: if there is a tear, there is a particular place that must be repaired. A general remorse does not close a particular tear. Whoever's whatever you tore, that is what is to be sewn.
Its practical counterpart is already recorded in the classical conditions of repentance — that where there is a claim of another person it must be restored is a measure widely repeated in the tradition. The word itself already carries this measure.
The first branch of the root — pure honey — lays down another measure for repentance: what has got mixed into it?
The things that can get mixed into a repentance are known: the discomfort of having been caught, fear of consequences, concern for reputation, the continuation of blaming someone else. None of these invalidates repentance — a person rarely acts with a pure intention. But the word shows a direction: to pick out what has got mixed in.
And it is of the same family as the measure recorded in the discussion of ostentation in al-Māʿūn: the value of an act is measured less by whether it was done than by what it was done with an eye to.
There are two common extremes: either not seeing what one has and always speaking of the lack, or letting go of asking by saying "one ought to give thanks". What the prayer does is to pass between the two: it names what was given ("our light"), and it asks for its continuation ("complete").
This shows that thanks and request can stand in the same sentence. The finding recorded in al-Fajr — that a person counts abundance an honouring and straitness a humiliation, and that both are rejected — is the opposite of this prayer: there a person was drawing a verdict from what he received, here he counts what he received and asks for its continuation.