al-Insān 76:22

Inna hādhā kāna lakum jazāʾan wa kāna saʿyukum mashkūrā "This is a return for you; and your striving has been met with thanks."

The summit of the sūra. Seventeen verses of description close with a single sentence — and what the sentence does is to rename the whole description.

لَكُمْ — "for you". The verse shifts suddenly to the second person plural.

In the twentieth verse the address had shifted to the second person singular (raʾayta — you see); there the addressee was the reader. Here it shifts to the second person plural and the addressee is the abrār themselves.

That is, in its last sentence the sūra drops the description and speaks directly. This is a speech uttered in the garden — and the sūra relays it without putting it in quotation marks.

Root: ج-ز-ي. Treated at the ninth verse: to give in return, to pay; used both of a good and of a bad return.

And now go back to the ninth verse:

لَا نُرِيدُ مِنكُمْ جَزَآءً وَلَا شُكُورًا — "we want from you neither a return nor thanks." (76/9)

إِنَّ هَٰذَا كَانَ لَكُمْ جَزَآءً وَكَانَ سَعْيُكُم مَّشْكُورًا — "this is a return for you; your striving has been met with thanks." (76/22)

The same two words. In the same order. Once refused, once given.

Jazāʾ and shukūr — these two were exactly what was not wanted from people in the ninth verse. What is given in the twenty-second verse is exactly these two.

This is the tightest structural move of the sūra and it is built entirely at the level of the words. What the abrār refused comes back from another hand.

And its logic is plain: one who stops asking something of people is not deprived of receiving it; only from whom he will receive it changes.

I record this link as a reading drawn from the sharing of the words; the words in the two verses and their order are in the text and can be compared.

Root: س-ع-ي. Treated in the discussions of al-Layl 92/4 and al-Ghāshiya 88/9. I summarise the findings there: its concrete sense is to walk fast — the state between walking and running; from there it widened into "to strive, to run after a task". The conclusion recorded in al-Layl was this: man is not a standing being but a running one; the question is not "are you going?" but "where?"

At al-Ghāshiya 88/9 this word occurred in the construction لِسَعْيِهَا رَاضِيَة — "well pleased with its own striving". The finding recorded in the section on al-Ghāshiya: there too there is a striving, but the striving turns back to the one who strove.

al-Insān 76/22 takes the same word and changes its subject.

The two verses form a pair: one an approval from within, the other an approval from above.

Root: ش-ك-ر. Treated at the third verse, and there the explanation the lexicographers transmit was recorded: at the centre of the root lies giving much in return for little; a she-camel that gives plentiful milk for all that she eats little is called shakūr.

Here the word is a passive participle: mashkūr — "thanked, met with thanks". That is, not the one who thanks but the one who is thanked.

And who is the agent? It is not said — but it also cannot be said. The verb's coming in the passive is necessary; for had its subject been written openly, the sentence would have been built directly as God's thanking a servant. The verse says it with a passive participle: it states the outcome and leaves the agent implicit.

There are places where the Qurʾān uses this word of God as an attribute — in the shakūr pattern. That is, the idea is not foreign: the giver gives in return to the one given to.

And the root sense of thanks falls exactly into place in this sentence: much in return for little. The deeds the sūra counted were few — one meal, one vow, one fear. Their return ran to seventeen verses.

It was recorded in the section on how the sūra is built; here it is completed:

لَمْ يَكُن شَيْـًٔا مَّذْكُورًا — "he was not a thing mentioned." (1) وَكَانَ سَعْيُكُم مَّشْكُورًا — "your striving has been met with thanks." (22)

Both sentences are built with كَانَ. Both end with a passive participle on the same pattern. And between the two lies the whole story of man.

The being that is not mentioned becomes the being that is thanked.

And what closes the distance between the two words stands in the middle of the sūra: one meal, given though they loved it, without any return being asked.

I record this as my own reading. The pattern of the two words, their roots and their positions in the sūra are the data of the text.