Nūḥ 71:17-18

Wa'llāhu anbatakum mina'l-arḍi nabātā · Thumma yuʿīdukum fīhā wa yukhrijukum ikhrājā

"And God made you grow from the earth as a growing thing. Then He will return you into it, and He will bring you out, and how He will bring you out."

The verse does not say "He created you from the earth". It says "He made you grow from the earth".

Root ن-ب-ت: a plant's coming up out of the ground, its sprouting. Nabāt, a plant. Anbata (Form IV), to make grow — that is, to bring about a thing's coming up out of the ground. In Arabic this verb belongs to the field of agriculture and vegetation; the Qurʾān uses it regularly in the context of rain and crops (al-Anʿām 6/99; al-Naḥl 16/11; al-Ḥajj 22/5; ʿAbasa 80/27).

Here the object of that verb is the human being.

This is one of the most organic images the Qurʾān uses in describing the human being, and it says several things at once:

First: origin. The human being comes from the earth. The Qurʾān says this elsewhere too ("He created you from dust", al-Rūm 30/20; Fāṭir 35/11), but the verb "created" suggests a manufacture. The verb "made grow" suggests something else: growth. A plant is not cast in a mould; it comes out slowly, from within itself.

Second: passivity. A plant does not grow of itself and does not decide that it has grown. It does not determine what is in the soil, when it will come up, how big it will grow. The subject of the verb is God, the human being is the object. The argument of the preceding pair of verses (13-14) attains an image here: the human being is not the agent of his own beginning.

Third: transience. A plant is seasonal. This will be said openly in the next verse: "then He will return you into it."

The verse says anbatakum … nabātā. This is a cognate accusative (a verbal noun reinforcing the verb). But there is a technical oddity and the classical grammarians have dwelt on it:

The verb anbata is in Form IV; its verbal noun should be inbāt. In the verse, however, nabāt occurs — this is the verbal noun of the base three-letter verb (nabata).

The grammarians explain it thus: in place of a verb's own verbal noun, another verbal noun from the same root can be used as a cognate accusative; this is called "an expression indicating the sense of the verbal noun". There are examples of it in Arabic and it is not counted an irregularity.

But a difference of sense arises and it is a beautiful one: had it said inbātā, the emphasis would have fallen on the act of making grow. When it says nabātā, the emphasis falls on the plant itself. That is, the sentence comes close to this: "He made you grow from the earth — as a growing thing grows." Not the act but the image is being reinforced.

The Qurʾān uses this verb once more for a human being, and that place is striking:

"So her Lord accepted her with a beautiful acceptance and made her grow as a beautiful growing thing." (Āl ʿImrān 3/37)

This is the verse that speaks of Mary's birth and her upbringing; the expression used is wa anbatahā nabātan ḥasanā — the same construction as Nūḥ 71/17, with an adjective added.

When the two verses are read together the scope of the root becomes visible: inbāt covers both coming into being and growing to maturity. In the verse about Mary, the qualification "as a beautiful growing thing" describes nurture itself.

Root ع-و-د: to return, to repeat. From the same root come ʿāda (a repeated behaviour, a custom), iʿāda (bringing back), maʿād (the place returned to), ʿīd (the day that comes round again).

The tense of the verb changes. Verse 17 is perfect (anbata — He made grow), verse 18 imperfect (yuʿīdu, yukhriju — He returns, He brings out). One has happened, two are to happen.

فِيهَا — "into it". The pronoun refers to arḍ (earth/soil). That is, death is here named "a return to the earth"; the plant comparison continues. A plant comes out of the earth and, when its season is over, mixes back into the earth.

The third stage: bringing out again.

Root خ-ر-ج: to come out. Ikhrāj (the Form IV verbal noun), to bring out. Again a cognate accusative: yukhrijukum ikhrājā. The fifth and last cognate accusative of the sūra.

The function of the emphasis here is clear. Those addressed in the sūra did not accept the resurrection; the repetition of the word conveys the certainty of the act: "He will bring out — and how He will bring out."

Three verbs, three stages:

The first and the third are in the same direction: up out of the earth. That is, the third stage is a repetition of the first. The argument is this: what has been done once can be done a second time. And the first doing is something the people witnessed in their own bodies.

The Qurʾān builds this argument by way of the plant many times; its clearest expression is this:

"We gave life to the dead earth and brought out grain from it… Thus too is the resurrection." (a summary of Yāsīn 36/33-34; also the end of al-Aʿrāf 7/57: "thus do We bring out the dead", and al-Zukhruf 43/11: "and thus you too will be brought out".)

Another verse gives this threefold chain in almost the same order:

"From it We created you, and to it We shall return you, and from it We shall bring you out one more time." (Ṭāhā 20/55)

When Nūḥ 71/17-18 is compared with Ṭāhā 20/55 the difference becomes visible: in Ṭāhā the first verb is khalaqnā (We created), here anbata (He made grow). The same chain said in the language of plants.

The measure the plant comparison gives makes a correction in the human being's view of himself. A plant:

• does not sow its own seed — you did not choose your beginning;
• is subject to its season — your span is not in your hands;
• feeds from the soil — you are not independent;
• and the place it returns to is the place it came out of.

It is possible to read this as a lowering, but that would be incomplete. The same comparison says one thing more: a plant is a thing that grows, not a thing that rots. The verse likens the human being not to stone, to clay, to mud, but to something living and growing. And the end of the chain is not the earth but a coming out again.