وَأَنَّا لَمَّا سَمِعْنَا الْهُدَىٰ آمَنَّا بِهِ ۖ فَمَن يُؤْمِن بِرَبِّهِ فَلَا يَخَافُ بَخْسًا وَلَا رَهَقًا
Wa annā lammā samiʿna'l-hudā āmannā bih, fa-man yuʾmin bi-Rabbihī fa-lā yakhāfu bakhsan wa lā rahaqā
"And that: when we heard the guidance we believed in it. Whoever believes in his Lord fears neither being given short nor being oppressed."
The verse is one of the most structured sentences in the first half of the sūra. It consists of two parts:
- First half: a testimony. "We heard, we believed." Past tense, first person plural, a single event.
- Second half: a general rule. "Whoever believes does not fear." A conditional clause, the general present, everyone.
That is, having related their own experience, the jinn draw a principle from that experience. In the first half of the sūra this is done only here.
The object has changed. In verse 1 what they listened to was "an astonishing recitation" — that is, a text. Here what they heard is al-hudā — the guidance itself.
This shows the distance the jinn have covered from the beginning of the sūra to here. First they heard a recitation and were astonished. Then they saw that this recitation guides to rushd (2). Now, looking back and naming the same thing, they name it by its fruit: what we heard was guidance.
In Arabic this may be called a form of naming known as majāz mursal: to name a thing by its result. But the real matter here is not a term of rhetoric but a process of knowledge: the same thing is named differently as it is understood.
And the verb has changed again: in verse 1 there was istamaʿa (to give ear), here samiʿnā (we heard). The move is from the verb of intent to the verb of result.
A conditional clause. And note: the one to be believed in is named not "God" but "his Lord" — and moreover not "our Lord" but "his Lord": bi-Rabbihī.
The pronoun refers back to the subject of the condition (man — whoever). That is: whoever believes in his own Lord.
This recalls the finding set up in the section on al-Falaq. There it was taken up why the seeking of refuge is framed not with the name "God" but with the name "Lord", and this was said: a Rabb is the one who disposes; the one sought refuge with is also the owner of the field that is feared.
Here the same logic works to produce not fear but assurance: the reason for the person's not fearing is the bond between him and the one who nurtures him and holds his affairs in hand.
A small but important grammatical note: the mood expected as the answer to the condition is the jussive (fa-lā yakhaf). In the verse the verb comes in the indicative (yakhāfu) — because the answer counts as a nominal sentence beginning with fāʾ.
The effect of this on the sense is: not fearing is not an event that will occur as the result of the condition, but a state that emerges. Not "if he believes he will not fear", but "the one who believes — he does not fear in any case."
A note on the readings: differing recitations of this verb are transmitted, and they yield a close result in point of sense. Since I am not sure of the details, I give no name of an imam and no classification.
The root ب-خ-س was taken up in al-Muṭaffifīn. The finding there: the sense of the root is to take a thing by lowering its value, to give someone less than his due; and the difference between bakhs and taṭfīf was set up thus — bakhs is a diminishing made in the price, taṭfīf one made in the amount. Its best-known use in the Qurʾān is in the story of Joseph: "And they sold him for a paltry price, a few counted dirhams" (Yūsuf 12/20 — thamanin bakhsin).
Here the word is in the sense of the fear of being given the return short: not receiving in full the return for what one has done.
And what is striking is this: the word is a commercial word. This was stressed in the section on al-Muṭaffifīn — that sūra is a sūra of trade: the measure, the balance, taking, giving, diminishing. Sūrat al-Jinn uses the same word for the requital of the hereafter.
That is, the verse says: the one who believes does not fear that a diminishing will be made in his account. This is something the Qurʾān says plainly elsewhere: "Whoever does an atom's weight of good will see it" (al-Zalzala 99/7). The completeness of the measure is the reason the fear is lifted.
| 72/6 | 72/13 | |
|---|---|---|
| What was done | Human beings sought refuge with the jinn | A person believed in his Lord |
| Rahaq | Increased (fa-zādūhum rahaqā) | Is no longer feared (wa lā rahaqā) |
| Direction | Seeking refuge at the wrong address | Faith at the right address |
The same word, twice, seven verses apart. In the first the product of a wrong turning, in the second what a right turning removes.
And this equation is nowhere formulated plainly. The same word is simply used in two places and the reader is expected to make the link. This is a method the Qurʾān resorts to very often in the short sūras; like instances were recorded in the sections on al-Balad, al-Burūj and al-Ghāshiya.
- Bakhs: not receiving what you deserve. The fear of being given short.
- Rahaq: a burden you do not deserve riding on top of you. The fear of being overloaded.
The one, that is, is the lessening of the gain, the other the increase of the burden. The two pans of the balance.
And these are the two wings of the Qurʾān's conception of justice: no one is given less than he deserves, no one is loaded with more than he can carry. The second principle is stated plainly in the Qurʾān: "God does not burden any soul beyond its capacity" (al-Baqara 2/286).
What the believer does not fear is precisely injustice in these two directions. What he does not fear is not the punishment — it is injustice.
This has to be stated separately, because the verse is very easily misread. The sentence does not say "the believer fears nothing". It enumerates two definite things, and both concern treatment: being measured short and being overloaded. The fear that faith removes is the fear that the requital will be unjust.