وُجُوهٌ يَوْمَئِذٍ نَّاضِرَةٌ · إِلَىٰ رَبِّهَا نَاظِرَةٌ
Wujūhun yawmaʾidhin nāḍira · Ilā Rabbihā nāẓira "There are faces that day, radiant; they are looking to their Lord."
This pattern was treated in the section on al-Ghāshiya: wujūhun yawmaʾidhin + adjective. There two tableaux opened with the same pattern (khāshiʿa / nāʿima), and the finding recorded was this: the same subject, the same adverb of time, the same place, one word different — in Arabic this is called muqābala, and its effect is this: the difference between the two groups is presented not as a difference of treatment coming from outside but as two different fillings of the same sentence.
Al-Qiyāma uses the same pattern (22 and 24), but with one difference: in al-Ghāshiya the adjectives stood alone; here a further sentence is added behind each adjective (23 and 25). So the tableau has two layers: the state of the face, and the cause of that state.
The word's being indefinite is meaningful too: "certain faces". No number is given, no proportion. As was recorded for the opening verses in the section on al-Baqara, the Qurʾān gives no proportion when it classifies people.
Root: ن-ض-ر. This root was treated in detail in the discussion of al-Muṭaffifīn 83/24 (naḍrata'n-naʿīm). The summary of the finding there:
The word's proper field is plant life — naḍira'sh-shajaru, the tree grew fresh, put out green. Naḍīr — fresh, green, bright. Nuḍār — pure gold (because of its brightness). The word carries the look of a plant that has taken water over to the human face. And instead of naming an emotion — instead of saying happiness, peace, joy — the Qurʾān says something seen in the face.
What is to be added here: the word is an active participle here (nāḍira), and a verbal noun in al-Muṭaffifīn (naḍra). That is, there it was a quality seen in the faces; here it is the face's own state. Al-Muṭaffifīn tells what someone looking from outside sees (taʿrifu fī wujūhihim — "you will know it in their faces"); al-Qiyāma speaks of the face itself.
Root: ن-ظ-ر. To look, to turn the eye. Its derivatives: naẓar (a look), manẓar (an appearance), intiẓār (waiting), nāẓir (one who looks, who watches over), naẓīr (equal, counterpart — what stands opposite), munāẓara (looking at one another, disputation).
The nearness in sound between ن-ض-ر and ن-ظ-ر was treated in a table in the section on al-Muṭaffifīn, and this record was entered there: that the two roots are separate is certain; the nearness of their sounds and their occurring together in two sūras are data of the text. The warning made in the section on al-Falaq (nearness of sound is not unity of root) was repeated there as well.
I keep the same record here. The single letter of difference between the two words (ض / ظ) is an observation, not a claim of derivation.
But this can be said, and it was said in the section on al-Muṭaffifīn too: the Qurʾān draws a link between "looking" and "shining." The face that looks shines.
The complement of nāẓira (ilā Rabbihā) has been brought forward. The expected order would be nāẓiratun ilā Rabbihā.
And this fronting stands at the centre of one of the most disputed questions in exegesis — because if it is said to convey restriction (ḥaṣr), the meaning becomes: they are looking only to their Lord, and to nothing else.