وَأَنَّا كُنَّا نَقْعُدُ مِنْهَا مَقَاعِدَ لِلسَّمْعِ ۖ فَمَن يَسْتَمِعِ الْآنَ يَجِدْ لَهُ شِهَابًا رَّصَدًا
"And that: we used to sit there in seats for listening. But now whoever gives ear finds a flame lying in wait for him."
Again kāna + imperfect: a habit continuing in the past. Not something that happened once, but a settled arrangement.
There is a structure in the sentence resembling an absolute object: naqʿudu … maqāʿida — "we used to sit sittings". In Arabic the bringing of a noun from the same root as the verb either reinforces the verb or specifies its kind. Here the second function is to the fore: particular seats, appointed points.
That is, what is related is not a haphazard roaming; it is a regular, settled listening activity that had taken up its stations. Like watch-posts.
لِلسَّمْعِ — "for listening". The lām at the head conveys purpose. The aim of the sitting is stated plainly: to obtain knowledge.
The verbal noun here is samʿ — simple hearing. Compare with istamaʿa (to give ear) in verse 1: there was an attentive listening there, and its outcome was faith. Here too there is listening, but its aim is different.
الْآنَ — "now". This may be the sharpest word of the sūra. A single adverb seats the whole passage on a line of time: there is a before, there is an after, and we are now in the after.
And the verb has returned: يَسْتَمِعِ — the same as istamaʿa in verse 1. The sūra uses the same verb twice, for two separate works:
| 72/1 | 72/9 | |
|---|---|---|
| Who | A company of the jinn | "Whoever" (indeterminate) |
| To what | To the Qurʾān | To the heaven |
| How | Uninvited but in the open | Secretly, taking up a station |
| Result | Faith, rushd | A flame |
Two listenings, two results. The same verb. The difference lies in what is listened to and in the manner of the listening.
This contrast carries the sūra's main argument: there are two roads to knowledge — what is given and what is stolen. The road of what is given is open and leads to rushd; the road of what is stolen has been closed. The jinn have tried both and report the outcome of both.
- mirṣād — a place of watching, a place of ambush. In the Qurʾān: "Your Lord is indeed in the place of watching" (al-Fajr 89/14). This was taken up in the sections on al-Fajr and al-Ghāshiya.
- marṣad — the point where an ambush is set. "Sit for them at every place of watching" (al-Tawba 9/5).
- raṣad — one who watches, or those who watch. It is used as a collective noun too.
Raṣad here stands as the adjective of shihāb, or in apposition to it. The sense: a flame that is not haphazard but waiting, watching, standing ready.
That is, the picture is this: there used to be seats — now others are sitting there. The place has not changed; who sits there has changed. The raṣad has taken the place of the jinn's maqāʿid.
And this word will return in verse 27. There it will be said that a raṣad is sent before and behind the revelation given to a messenger. The sūra, that is, uses the same word for two separate works:
| 72/9 | 72/27 | |
|---|---|---|
| Whom the raṣad watches | The one trying to steal knowledge | The revelation itself |
| Its function | To block | To protect |
| Its direction | Keeping the outside away | Bringing the inside through unspoilt |
The same watching, at two ends: the channel is closed on the one side and guarded on the other. The sūra secures the revelation from both sides at once — illicit entry is blocked, legitimate carriage is protected. This is one of the most elegant internal links of the sūra.
What can be drawn from these two verses is not a cosmology but a measure for knowledge, and it can be gathered under two heads.
First: the matter of the source of a claim to hidden knowledge. In the world the sūra addressed there was a trade selling knowledge unreachable by ordinary means. The ground of that trade was the claim that the knowledge came through an unseen channel. The verse declares that channel closed — and it is those at the other end of the channel who say it is closed.
This form of argument holds today as well: the weakest place in a claim to hidden knowledge is the claimed channel itself. Before the content of the knowledge is discussed, one may ask by what road that knowledge came; and that road most often cannot be described.
Second: two manners of listening. By using the same verb twice the sūra separates two attitudes: listening to an open word and snatching something from a closed place. The first is learning; the second is harvesting. Even their aims differ: the one listens in order to understand, the other in order to use.