al-Aʿrāf 7:50-51

Wa nādā aṣḥābu'n-nāri aṣḥāba'l-jannati an afīḍū ʿalaynā mina'l-māʾi aw mimmā razaqakumu'llāh, qālū inna'llāha ḥarramahumā ʿala'l-kāfirīn · Alladhīna'ttakhadhū dīnahum lahwan wa laʿiban wa gharrathumu'l-ḥayātu'd-dunyā, fa'l-yawma nansāhum kamā nasū liqāʾa yawmihim hādhā wa mā kānū bi-āyātinā yajḥadūn

"The people of the Fire call out to the people of the Garden: 'Pour down on us some water, or some of what God has provided you.' They say: 'God has forbidden both to the deniers.' · Those who took their religion as a diversion and a game, and whom the life of this world deluded. So today We forget them — just as they forgot the meeting of this day of theirs, and as they used knowingly to deny Our signs."

In this section nidāʾ (calling out) occurs four times, and all four come from a different direction. This is a countable datum:

Four calls, three different parties. And the direction of the sequence is worth recording: the first three come from above downwards or from the side, the fourth from below upwards.

I record this as my own reading and it is not binding; its ground is the subjects of the four verses: through the section the speech is not one-directional. But one thing never changes: in no call does the addressee give the caller what he asks. In the forty-fourth verse the answer is "yes", but a curse follows it; in the fiftieth the answer is a flat refusal.

The root ف-ي-ض: a vessel filling and overflowing, the flowing of what overflows. Fāḍa'l-māʾu — the water overflowed. Afāḍa (Form IV) — to make overflow, to make flow, to pour.

The choice of the word is worth recording, and this is an observation about word order: what is asked for is not "give us" (aʿṭūnā) but "pour down on us". That is, the request rests on the assumption that what is to be given is abundant — a portion is asked of something that is overflowing.

And the same root is used in the Qurʾān in the passage on the pilgrimage too (thumma afīḍū min ḥaythu afāḍa'n-nās — al-Baqara 2/199) — there the pouring of people from a place is described. The picture in the root is the same in both: a mass in flow.

The construction of the answer must be recorded: the people of the Garden do not say "we will not give". They are not the subject of the sentence: inna'llāha ḥarramahumā — the one who has forbidden is God.

I record this as an observation about word order: the refusal is given not as a personal stance but as the announcement of a ruling. And this accords with the forty-third verse: there the ghill (rancour) had been pulled out of the breasts of the people of the Garden. In the mouth of a company from whom rancour has been removed, a refusal can only be built this way.

And the pronoun humā (the two of them) must be recorded: two things were asked for — water and provision; and the refusal covers both at once.

The root ل-ه-و: to be diverted, to be occupied with what keeps one from the real business. The root ل-ع-ب: play, an unserious occupation.

The lexicographers give the difference between the two words thus: laʿib is an occupation aimless in itself, while lahw is what keeps a person from his real business. That is, one looks to the act itself, the other to its outcome.

And the word order must be recorded: ittakhadhū dīnahum lahwan wa laʿibā — what is abandoned is not the religion; the religion itself has been turned into a game.

I record this as my own reading and it is not binding; its ground is the object of the verb: the verse describes not the abandonment of religion but its being kept in hand and emptied of content. The religion stands where it was; its function has changed.

And this is the same pattern recorded in many places in al-Baqara: the form is preserved, the function is emptied. I rely on those treatments.

The same phrase can be compared once more with the passage on zīna treated at the thirty-first verse: there, what had been made lawful was held forbidden; here, what is serious is turned into a game. Two errors, in opposite directions.

The sentence is built with kamā: the requital is named in the language of the offence itself.

And in ascribing the verb to God a note of tanzīh is needed. This note was entered at 9/67 in al-Tawba (nasu'llāha fa-nasiyahum), and I rely on it: the Qurʾān itself says wa mā kāna rabbuka nasiyyā (Maryam 19/64). For this reason nansāhum here is explained, by the shared note of the lexicographers and the exegetes, by the second sense of the root — to leave aside, not to attend to, not to take into account. I do not repeat it here.

What belongs here is the name of what was forgotten: liqāʾa yawmihim hādhā — "the meeting of this day of theirs". That is, what was forgotten is not a piece of information but an appointment.