al-Ḥāqqa 69:25-27

Wa ammā man ūtiya kitābahu bi-shimālihi fa-yaqūlu yā laytanī lam ūta kitābiyah · Wa lam adri mā ḥisābiyah · Yā laytahā kānati'l-qāḍiya "But as for him who is given his book in his left hand, he says: 'Would that my book had not been given to me! Would that I had not known what my reckoning was! Would that it had been the one that made an end!'"

Root: ش-م-ل. Shimāl — the left side; and at the same time the north and the north wind. In Arabic the directions are named from the standpoint of one facing the qibla or the east; for one facing east, the left is the north.

From the same root: شَمِلَ — to comprise, to encompass (shāmil). Whether the lexicographers connect these two senses is disputed; I do not enter into the disagreement.

The right/left opposition is settled in the Qurʾān: أَصْحَٰبُ ٱلْيَمِين and أَصْحَٰبُ ٱلشِّمَال (al-Wāqiʿa 56/27, 41). This opposition was treated in the section on al-Inshiqāq; I do not repeat it.

And the difference between al-Inshiqāq and this verse was handled in a table in the section on al-Inshiqāq (there "from behind him", here "in his left hand"); three explanations were given and no preference was expressed. I preserve that suspension of judgement.

There is, however, a point not taken up in the section on al-Inshiqāq, and it needs recording: the two men of the two sūras say different things.

In al-Inshiqāq the man cries out; in al-Ḥāqqa the man thinks.

This difference shows that the two sūras stand in different places. Al-Inshiqāq gives the moment of punishment: the person is in no state to think anything, he only cries out. Al-Ḥāqqa, by contrast, makes the person frame sentences — and the sentences he frames are the taking of stock of his life.

I record this as my own reading. The wordings of the two verses can be verified.

لَيْتَ is in Arabic the particle of wishing, and the definition the grammarians give is critical: layta is the desiring of something whose coming about is impossible. When something possible is desired, laʿalla (perhaps) is used.

The particle itself, that is, announces that the wish is in vain.

And يَا (the vocative particle) has been prefixed. The vocative has no addressee; in Arabic this conveys the intensity of the cry. The person is calling out to no one, he is merely raising his voice.

The man says "would that" three times: 25, 26 (the continuation of the same sentence) and 27.

And the order of the three wishes carries a logic:

1. "Would that my book had not been given" — he wishes not to see the record. 2. "Would that I had not known my reckoning" — he wishes not to know the content of the record. 3. "Would that it had been the one that made an end" — he wishes never to have been.

He moves backward in three steps: not to see → not to know → not to be. At every step the demand grows, and at every step it becomes more impossible.

I record this as my own reading. The order of the three wishes is in the text.

There is something to notice here, and it is one of the sūra's hardest points.

The man does not ask to be forgiven.

He speaks for five verses and does not once say "forgive", does not say "send me back", does not say "give me one more chance". The Qurʾān records such requests elsewhere: "Our Lord! Bring us out of here" (al-Muʾminūn 23/107); "Send me back, that I may do righteous work" (al-Muʾminūn 23/99-100).

Here those requests are absent. The man wishes only not to know and not to be.

His demand, that is, is not a remedy but an escape. And what he wants to escape is not even the punishment; it is the record. Both of the first two wishes concern the book.

I record this as my own reading. Its ground is the content of the five-verse speech.

Root: د-ر-ي. And this root had occurred in the third verse of the sūra: wa mā adrāka — "what made you know?"

The sūra uses the root twice and both times it conveys not knowing — but in opposite directions:

In the third verse not knowing was a deficiency; in the twenty-sixth not knowing is a wish. The same root, once at the beginning and once at the end, with two different values.

I record this as my own reading. The two occurrences can be counted in the text.

And it says one thing more. As was recorded in the sections on al-Humaza and al-Qāriʿa, the pattern mā adrāka announces, before any information is given, that knowledge will not suffice. The man now possesses that knowledge. And the moment he possesses it, he wants to be rid of it.

The measure recorded in the section on al-Takāthur is exactly at work here: "certainty will come, but it will come at the moment when it is of no more use."

ٱلْقَاضِيَة — Root: ق-ض-ي. And this root has a wide field in Arabic:

• قَضَىٰ — he judged, he decided, he finished the matter. Qāḍī (a judge) and qaḍāʾ (a judgement) come from here.
• قَضَىٰ عَلَيْهِ — he finished him off, he killed him. A settled expression for death in Arabic.
• قَضَىٰ ٱلدَّيْنَ — he paid the debt, he settled it.
• قَضَىٰ حَاجَتَهُ — he met his need, he completed his business.

The shared core is to finish, to close, to complete. To leave no matter hanging.

ٱلْقَاضِيَة is again on the fāʿila metre: that which finishes, that which brings to an end.

To what does the pronoun refer? Layta-hā — feminine. The classical explanations:

The first view is the most widespread and has a strong support within the Qurʾān:

"They call: 'O Mālik! Let your Lord make an end of us!' He says: 'You are to remain.'" (al-Zukhruf 43/77)

The verb there is لِيَقْضِ — the same root. And the request is the same: to be finished. The Qurʾān, that is, records the same wish plainly in another sūra.

Also: "Death is not decreed for them that they might die, nor is their punishment lightened for them" (Fāṭir 35/36).

The idea the expression carries. The man wants death to be the thing that makes an end. That is, he wants it to be a finish that leaves nothing after it.

And this is the reverse of the whole logic of the sūra. The sūra opened as al-Ḥāqqa: that which comes true. The whole claim of the sūra is that something continues and at some point finds its requital. The man's wish is the rejection of that claim: would that it had not continued.

And this was exactly the supposition of the man recorded at al-Inshiqāq 84/14: "He supposed that he would never return." Two sūras record the same idea at two different times: the one in this world as a supposition, the other in the hereafter as a wish.

What the man wrongly supposed in this world, he wishes for in the hereafter.

I record this as my own reading; the wordings of the two verses and the finding in the section on al-Inshiqāq are data that can be verified.