al-Insān 76:11-12

Fa-waqāhumu'llāhu sharra dhālika'l-yawmi wa laqqāhum naḍratan wa surūrā · Wa jazāhum bimā ṣabarū jannatan wa ḥarīrā "So God protected them from the evil of that day and brought them to meet freshness and joy. And for their patience He rewarded them with a garden and with silk."

The verse begins with فَ: they feared, and therefore they were protected.

The relation between the two verses says more than a relation of recompense. In the seventh verse they were fearing; in the eleventh they were protected from what they feared. Fear becomes the cause of protection.

This is an equation the Qurʾān sets up in several places, and it is here in its plainest form: to fear a thing is the way to be protected from it.

Root: و-ق-ي. Its concrete sense: to set a shield before a thing, to cover it, to keep it safe.

Its derivatives:

• وِقَايَة (wiqāya) — a protective covering, a shield.
• تَقْوَىٰ (taqwā) — and this word is from the same root. That is, taqwā is, in the word's own logic, "being protected", "taking a shield for oneself".
• مُتَّقِى (muttaqī) — one who is protected.

And now the work of the verse becomes visible. These people feared a day (7, 10); God protected them from that day (11). The verb is the verb of the word taqwā.

That is, the sūra gives the description of taqwā without using the word taqwā: to fear something and behave accordingly, and then to be protected from it. The root of the word already carries this movement.

I record this as my own reading; the shared root is linguistic data.

شَرَّ ذَٰلِكَ ٱلْيَوْم — "the evil of that day". Dhālika is the demonstrative that points to what is far. In the seventh and tenth verses the day was indefinite (yawman — a day); here it becomes definite: dhālika'l-yawm — "that day". The indefinite day that was feared becomes the definite day one is protected from.

Root: ل-ق-ي. This root was treated in the discussions of al-Inshiqāq 84/4 and 84/6. The finding there was this: the root works in two directions — laqiya (he met, he attained) and alqā (he threw, he cast, he brought before) — that is, "to throw" and "to meet" are from the same root, because to throw something is to bring it before you.

What is peculiar to this passage is the pattern. The verb in the verse is of the تَفْعِيل (tafʿīl) form: laqqā. This form states causation and intensity. Laqqāhu'sh-shayʾ — he brought a thing before him, he made him meet with it.

That is, the verse does not say "He gave." It could have been aʿṭāhum or ātāhum. The verb chosen has the sense of "He brought before them, He made them meet with it."

And read together with the previous verse this sets up a scene: in the tenth verse there was the possibility of a scowling day coming before them. In the eleventh what comes before them is freshness and joy. The same movement, the opposite object.

Root: ن-ض-ر. This root was analysed completely in the discussion of al-Muṭaffifīn 83/24 (naḍrata'n-naʿīm). I summarise the findings there:

The proper field of the root is the plant: naḍira'sh-shajaru — the tree grew fresh, it greened. Naḍīr — fresh, green, bright; nuḍār — pure gold (for its brightness). That is, the word carries the look of a plant that has taken water over onto the human face. And the most concrete side of the verse is this: in describing the state in the garden the Qurʾān gives no name of a feeling — it states something seen in the face.

There the closeness in sound between ن-ض-ر and ن-ظ-ر (to look) was also treated in a table, and it was recorded that closeness of sound is not unity of root. The pair nāḍira / nāẓira in al-Qiyāma 75/22-23 and the question of the beatific vision around those verses are taken up in the section on al-Qiyāma; I do not carry it over here.

There are two differences peculiar to this passage:

First — direction. In al-Muṭaffifīn the naḍra was seen from outside: taʿrifu fī wujūhihim — "you will know it in their faces". There is an observer and he knows it. In al-Insān, however, the naḍra is given to them: laqqāhum naḍratan. There is no observer; there is a giver.

Second — the construct. In al-Muṭaffifīn it is naḍrata'n-naʿīm — "the freshness of bliss", that is, the source of the freshness is stated. Here there is no construct; the word stands alone and indefinite: naḍratan. The indefiniteness here states magnification (taʿẓīm).

Root: س-ر-ر. This root was treated in the discussion of al-Inshiqāq 84/9. I summarise the finding there: from the same root come surūr (joy), sirr (what is hidden) and sarīr (a throne); and according to the explanation the lexicographers transmit, surūr is the secret expansion of the heart within — that is, joy is akin to the "hiddenness" branch of the root, being what is inside before it shows outside.

Now set the two words side by side:

The verse gives the two together. That is, what is given is neither only an appearance nor only a feeling; it is both at once.

And this closes a gap. A person's face may shine while his inside is dark; his inside may be at ease while his face is closed. By setting the two words side by side the verse closes off this possibility.

I record this as my own reading; the semantic fields of the two roots are transmitted.

A side note: in the section on al-Inshiqāq sarīr (throne) was also attached to this root. This sūra uses for the couch not sarīr but the word أَرَآئِك (arāʾik) (verse 13). That is, the root is represented here only by its branch of joy.

One of the most frequently skipped sentences of the sūra, and the only place that names the ground of the reward.

In بِمَا the particle بِ is here the bāʾ of compensation: it states a return, an equivalent. "Because they …", "in return for their …".

And now the question is: in return for what?

From the seventh verse to the tenth the sūra counted four things: paying the vow, fearing a day, feeding food, wanting no return. None of these had been called "patience".

The twelfth verse gathers all four at once into a single word: صَبَرُوا۟.

Root: ص-ب-ر. It was treated in the discussion of al-Baqara 2/45, and the finding there is decisive here:

The root means to hold, to hold back, to confine: to stop something by force in a place. This is different from "enduring" — enduring is passive, you bear what comes upon you. Patience, however, is active: to hold the self, not to let it go where it wants to go. That is why patience is required not only in affliction but also in worship and in refraining from sin; in all of them the work done is the same — holding.

Now go back with this description to the four acts of the sūra:

All four are a holding. Having counted four separate behaviours, the sūra names the single movement beneath them all: ṣabr — holding oneself.

That is, the expression "in return for their patience" is not a substitution but a naming. The verse does not put something else in place of the deeds it counted; it says what the things counted are.

I record this as my own reading; the description of ṣabr and the content of the verses are in the text.

And this also explains why the note ʿalā ḥubbihī was put in the eighth verse. Without that note the act of feeding would not have been a patience; it would only have been a distribution. Without a wish to be held there is no patience.

Two things given are counted, and the two are not of the same kind: one is a place, one a garment.

جَنَّة — root: ج-ن-ن. Treated in the discussion of al-Baqara 2/25; I summarise the finding there: the sense of the root is to cover, to hide, and its derivatives all turn about invisibility (janīn — the one covered in the womb; jinn — the unseen; majnūn — one whose mind is covered; mijann — a shield). Janna is the garden that covers the ground with its trees; and the word carries both the sense "the covering garden" and "what is hidden from sight". What is promised is, by definition, what cannot be seen now.

حَرِير — silk. Root: ح-ر-ر. The derivatives of the root spread over a wide field: ḥarr (heat), ḥurr (free, not a slave), taḥrīr (setting free; and also committing to writing).

The lexicographers do not agree about the historical link of the word with these branches, and I make no firm claim of derivation. The sense "silk" for ḥarīr is settled; how that sense came out of ḥarr or ḥurr is disputed.

Why silk? Two observations:

First — silk was an imported commodity in that world. It came from China, passed from hand to hand along the road, and was a luxury with a heavy price. That is, the word is not the name of a cloth but the name of an unattainability. In the twenty-first verse of the sūra this will be opened out further with two separate words for silk (sundus and istabraq).

Second — place and garment are given together. Where a person is and what is on him are the two layers that surround him. By counting both at once the verse covers the whole of the environment.

And the sūra mentions these two here as names, then opens them out over the next nine verses: the garden between 13 and 20, the silk in verse 21. The twelfth verse is a heading, what follows is the detail.