al-Jinn 72:3

Wa annahu taʿālā jaddu Rabbinā ma'ttakhadha ṣāḥibatan wa lā waladā

"And that: exalted is the majesty of our Lord; He has taken neither a consort nor a child."

The root ع-ل-و: height. Taʿālā is in the tafāʿul form. This form normally conveys reciprocity (taqātala — they killed one another), but here it serves the function of intensification and continuity: He whose exaltedness is in Himself and is always.

The word's typical use in the Qurʾān is in places where some deficiency is ascribed to God: the pattern "exalted is He; far above what they associate" occurs many times. Taʿālā, then, is an elevation placed in front of a denial: first He is raised up, then what belongs below is denied.

The most disputed word of the verse.

Root ج-د-د. Its concrete sense is to cut, to sever — to separate a thing sharply. The derivatives of the root branch from this single image, and at first sight they look unrelated to one another:

• jadīd — new. (Newly cut, newly separated; the state of cloth just cut from the loom.)
• jidd — seriousness. (To cut off and discard a decision; to cut off hesitation. Its opposite is hazl, jest.)
• jadd — grandfather. (The point at which one stops at a given place in the chain of descent.)
• judda — a road, a line, a streak. It occurs in the Qurʾān: "and in the mountains are streaks (judadun) white and red, of varying colours" (Fāṭir 35/27).
• jadd — fortune, luck; and greatness, majesty, loftiness.

The word here is the sense in the last item. In the classical commentaries the explanations transmitted for jadd in this verse may be gathered thus:

These explanations are less alternatives to one another than different faces of the same word; all of them turn about "greatness". I take the explanation of greatness as the basis, but state that this is not binding.

A note is needed: that the word jadd carries the sense "grandfather" is striking precisely because it stands in a verse where descent is denied. But to draw a sense from this — as though "descent is denied with the word for descent" — would be to force the root's settled use in Arabic. In Arabic the construct jaddu fulān is settled in the sense "so-and-so's majesty, his good fortune" and has nothing to do with kinship. I record this coincidence as an observation, not as an exegesis.

The choice of verb is very important and becomes visible when compared with Sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ.

Al-Ikhlāṣ 112/3: "lam yalid wa lam yūlad" — He has not begotten, and He has not been begotten. The verb: و-ل-د, begetting. What is denied is a biological / existential process.

Al-Jinn 72/3: "ma'ttakhadha ṣāḥibatan wa lā waladā" — He has taken neither a consort nor a child. The verb: the iftiʿāl form of أ-خ-ذ (ittikhādh) — to take, to appropriate, to take a thing and join it to oneself.

The difference is this, and it is fine: to beget is an act of nature; to take is an act of will. Al-Ikhlāṣ denies the idea of reproduction. Sūrat al-Jinn denies the idea of appropriation.

These two are not the same thing. A being can "take a child" without begetting — adoption, declaring someone a son, counting a being of one's own line. The Qurʾān denies most of the claims of a child ascribed to God with exactly this verb: "They said God has taken a child" (ittakhadha waladan — al-Baqara 2/116, Yūnus 10/68, Maryam 19/88 and onward).

So the two sūras close two separate doors:

In the section on al-Ikhlāṣ it was said that the expression "He has not been begotten" "closes every road by which the defenders of the claim might escape". Sūrat al-Jinn closes one more road: a line of descent that could be set up without begetting.

And one point more: the section on al-Ikhlāṣ already referred to this verse. There the verse "How should He have a child when He has no consort?" (al-Anʿām 6/101) was set beside this one and it was said, "And in the words of the jinn: exalted is the majesty of our Lord; He has taken neither a consort nor a child." This is the counterpart of that reference.

The root ص-ح-ب: to keep company, to be together, not to part. This root was taken up in the discussion of Sūrat al-Fīl by way of the word aṣḥāb.

Ṣāḥiba is the feminine form of the word and is used in Arabic in the sense "wife". The Qurʾān uses this word in a few places, and once counts it among those a person flees from at the gathering (ʿAbasa 80/36 — treated in that section).

Why ṣāḥiba and not zawja? In Arabic zawja is a more legal word: a wife by the bond of marriage. Ṣāḥiba, however, conveys companionship — one who is beside, who accompanies. The choice of the word widens the denial: what is denied is not merely a wedded wife but the idea of any being accompanying God.

In Sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ the order was polemical: first "He did not beget" (the addressee's claim), then "He was not begotten" (the logical extension of the claim).

Here the order is logical: first the consort, then the child. Because the idea of a child requires the idea of a consort. The sentence removes first the condition of the claim, then its consequence.

That the two sūras use two different orders shows that the orders are not arbitrary: al-Ikhlāṣ speaks inside a dispute, Sūrat al-Jinn frames a formula of profession.

One detail must not be missed: those who say this profession of tawḥīd are the jinn.

And the Qurʾān records precisely that the jinn were made the object of this claim: "And they set up a lineage (nasab) between Him and the jinn" (al-Ṣāffāt 37/158). "And they made the jinn partners with God" (al-Anʿām 6/100).

That is, beings to whom a divine descent was ascribed deny that descent as their first act in the sūra. Those who are the subject of the claim refute the claim.

This is one of the sūra's most effective rhetorical moves, and it is set up entirely by structure; nowhere is it said, "look, even they say this." The sentence works only by whose mouth it comes out of.