al-Ḥāqqa 69:35-37

Fa-laysa lahu'l-yawma hāhunā ḥamīm · Wa lā ṭaʿāmun illā min ghislīn · Lā yaʾkuluhu illa'l-khāṭiʾūn "So today, here, he has no friend. Nor any food except from the washings. None but those who offend eat it."

The فَ at the head is critical: "so", "therefore." The thirty-fifth verse, that is, is the consequence of the thirty-third and thirty-fourth.

And the consequence is the exact counterpart of the ground. I shall show this now.

One of the tightest internal links in the sūra is here, and it rests on a single word: طَعَام.

The same word, two verses apart, on two different sides.

The man did not urge that a meal be given; now he has no meal. And this is no chance proximity: between the two verses there is only one clause (fa-laysa lahu ḥamīm), and that clause too is built on the same logic.

In fact the matching is twofold. The two verses counted two things, and two verses give the counterpart of both:

The second row is beyond dispute: the same word, two verses apart.

The first row is a reading, and I record it as my own: faith is a bond (as was recorded in the section on al-Baqara 2/3, the centre of the root is trust and security, and faith is "not a one-sided acceptance but a bond of mutual trust"), and ḥamīm is a bond too. He who forms no bond has no bond left.

My reason for recording this match is that it accords with the sūra's general method. The same method was at work in the fifth and sixth verses: peoples that overstepped were destroyed by things that overstep. The sūra names the punishment with the word of the offence.

Root: ح-م-م. And this root carries a striking double sense in Arabic:

The same word means both the boiling water of Hell and an intimate friend.

The explanation the lexicographers give: beneath the root there is heat. Water that is ḥamīm is hot; a friend who is ḥamīm is one whose concern is warm. English has the same metaphor: "a warm friendship", "to behave coldly".

I transmit this explanation; I issue no firm judgement on whether the two senses historically come from a single root. But which is meant in the context of the verse is plain: a friend. For the verse says "he has none", and food is named next — that is, what is enumerated are things a person may possess.

Fuṣṣilat 41/34 is especially important, because there ḥamīm occurs as the result of a transformation: "Repel evil with what is better; then the one between whom and you there was enmity becomes as though he were an intimate friend." Ḥamīm, that is, is not something that exists of itself — it is something built.

And the man in al-Ḥāqqa had not built it.

This word occurs again in the next sūra in the arrangement of the codex — and there twice in one sentence:

"No friend will ask after a friend." (al-Maʿārij 70/10)

When you set the two sūras side by side, a completion emerges:

Al-Ḥāqqa says that one man has no friend; al-Maʿārij says that friendship does not work on that day.

The two sūras give two stages, that is: in the first there is no friend, in the second a friend is of no avail even if there is one. I shall return to this link in the section on al-Maʿārij.

Two adverbs side by side: time and place.

And both look unnecessary — had the sentence said "he has no friend", the sense would not have suffered. Their addition must have a function.

To my mind it is this: the two adverbs limit the verdict, and that limitation makes the sentence harder.

To say "today, here" is to say "at another time and in another place he had one." The man had friends; he had wealth, he had authority, he had a circle. The sūra does not deny this. It only states the field of validity.

And this ties to the twenty-eighth verse: "My wealth has availed me nothing." There was wealth — it did not avail. There were friends — they are not here.

I record this as my own reading. Its ground is the presence of the two adverbs despite their looking unnecessary.

The word occurs in the Qurʾān only here. This is the reason for the disagreement over its sense: there is no possibility of comparison within the Qurʾān.

Root: غ-س-ل. Ghasala — to wash. Ghusl is washing; ghusāla is wash-water, washings — the dirty water that runs off when a thing is washed.

غِسْلِين is on the fiʿlīn metre. The majority of the lexicographers read the word in the same field as ghusāla: what runs off a thing that is washed.

The views on its sense:

The first view is the strongest because it follows directly from the root of the word and requires no further assumption. I prefer it; it is not binding.

And here there is a comparison of patterns that ties directly to a sūra treated earlier in this commentary:

Two sūras, the same grammatical pattern, two different hapax words.

The Qurʾān, that is, uses the same sentence structure twice and each time puts into it a word that occurs nowhere else. Both are undefined, both incomparable.

This may have a function, and I record it as my own reading: if the word is not known, the description cannot be completed. The hearer hears the word, cannot fully construct its sense, and is left with a gap in his hands. As was recorded in the section on al-Qāriʿa: "a description is not a definition but a pointing."

And there is a difference too: ḍarīʿ is dry, ghislīn is liquid. Two sūras fill the same gap with two different textures.

إِلَّا (except, other than) is the particle of exception, and its function here is striking.

The sentence might have been framed: "His food is of washings." That would have been a plain statement.

Instead: "He has no food, except of washings." First an absence is set up, and then the exception comes.

The effect is this: the washings are not presented as a food; they are presented as an exception falling inside the absence of food. The verse refuses, that is, even to call it "food", and it refuses by the structure of the sentence.

I record this as an observation about word order.

And the third verse comes with a second exception: "None but those who offend eat it."

ٱلْخَٰطِـُٔونَ — Root: خ-ط-أ. The same root occurred in the ninth verse: bi'l-khāṭiʾa — "they brought that offence."

The sūra uses the root twice:

What was brought in the ninth verse thus returns in the thirty-seventh to those who brought it. The sūra names the offence and the offender with the same root, and puts twenty-eight verses between them.

I record this as a verbal link within the sūra; the two occurrences can be verified.

The kind of the word. As was recorded at the ninth verse, Arabic distinguishes khaṭaʾ (an unintended mistake) from khiṭʾ/khaṭīʾa (a deliberate swerve). Khāṭiʾūn is from the second branch: those who take the wrong road knowingly.

Another occurrence confirms this: "a lying, sinful forelock" (al-ʿAlaq 96/16) — there kādhiba khāṭiʾa come side by side and both convey a deliberate act. This construction was treated in the section on al-ʿAlaq.

A third sentence of exception. And note: all three of the thirty-fifth, thirty-sixth and thirty-seventh verses are built on negation:

• "…he has no friend." (35)
• "…there is no food, except…" (36)
• "None but… eat it." (37)

Three verses, three negative sentences. The scene of the man on the right (21-24), by contrast, was built with four positive sentences: in a life well pleased, in a lofty garden, its fruits near, eat and drink.

The two scenes are contrary in their grammar as well, then: the one is built of "there is", the other of "there is not".

I record this as my own reading. The mood of the sentences can be counted in the text.