al-Jinn 72:23

Illā balāghan mina'llāhi wa risālātih, wa man yaʿṣi'llāha wa rasūlahu fa-inna lahu nāra jahannama khālidīna fīhā abadā

"Only a conveying from God and His messages. And whoever disobeys God and His messenger — for him is the fire of Hell, wherein they abide for ever."

This is the most disputed grammatical question of the verse. There are three main views:

The second view is the most fluent in point of sense and is widely defended in the classical commentaries: having enumerated what he does not have, the Prophet says the one thing he does have. I find this reasonable; I do not offer it as a binding preference.

And on this reading the verse becomes one of the most balanced sentences of the sūra: after the absences enumerated across four verses, a single presence. The one thing the messenger has in his hand: to carry.

Root ب-ل-غ: to arrive at a place, to reach, to attain. Balagha — it reached. Bāligh — one who has reached the age of maturity. Balāgha — the art of bringing a word's sense to its target.

بَلَاغ, as a verbal noun, means "conveying"; as a noun, "what is conveyed, the message".

The idea at the core of the word is this: the carrier is not the message itself. The messenger's work is to bring something from one place to another. This is the positive expression of what is said in verse 21 of the sūra: I cannot give rushd — but I can bring what guides to rushd.

The Qurʾān draws this limit plainly in many places: the pattern "Yours is only the conveying" occurs in more than one place.

Root ر-س-ل: to let loose, to send. This root was taken up in the section on al-Fīl: rasūl (a messenger sent), risāla (messengership), mursal (one sent).

The word is plural: risālāt — messages, things sent. Not the singular (risāla).

The plural has two readings, and both are found in the classical sources:

• The multiplicity of the content: not a single message but many rulings, reports and commands.
• The continuity of the revelation: the whole chain of the prophets. The Qurʾān's positioning of itself as the continuation of the earlier revelations.

And the word will return in verse 28: "so that He may know that they have conveyed the messages of their Lord (risālāti Rabbihim)." The same word, the same plural form. In its last two verses the sūra will repeat both key words of verse 23: balāgh → ablaghū, risālāt → risālāt.

The second half of the sentence gives a ruling, and its link with the first half is this: if the conveying has been done, the responsibility of responding has passed to the addressee.

So the order is: the messenger has nothing in his hand but the conveying → the conveying has arrived → what comes after is the hearer's.

عَصَىٰ — root ع-ص-ي: to oppose, to rebel. Concerning the concrete sense of the root the lexicographers set up a link with the word ʿaṣā (a staff): to grasp a staff, to break away from the group.

"God and His messenger" — the two are named together. This is the natural consequence of the notion of conveying: whoever rejects the message has rejected both the sender of the message and its carrier.

خُلْد — root خ-ل-د: to remain, to be lasting. أَبَد — time without end.

A note on word order: the sentence begins with "fa-inna lahu" (singular) and continues with "khālidīna fīhā" (plural). This is because the particle man (whoever) is singular in wording and plural in sense — the same transition was present in verse 14 (man aslama → fa-ulāʾika).