يُدْخِلُ مَن يَشَآءُ فِى رَحْمَتِهِۦ وَٱلظَّٰلِمِينَ أَعَدَّ لَهُمْ عَذَابًا أَلِيمًۢا
Yudkhilu man yashāʾu fī raḥmatih, wa'ẓ-ẓālimīna aʿadda lahum ʿadhāban alīmā "He admits whom He wills into His mercy. As for the wrongdoers, He has prepared for them a painful punishment."
The finding recorded in the section on al-Infiṭār for la-fī naʿīm / la-fī jaḥīm works here too: "the abrār do not attain the bliss, they are within the bliss; the fujjār are not thrown into the fire, they are within the fire. Both are described not as entering a place but as being in a place."
This verse, however, uses the verb of entering explicitly. That is, the outcome is the same (being inside) but here the moment of passage is mentioned as well.
رَحْمَة — root: ر-ح-م. This root was treated in detail in the section on al-Fātiḥa (al-Raḥmān, al-Raḥīm); the finding there was this: the concrete counterpart of the root is رَحِم (raḥim) — the mother's womb. I do not repeat it.
But the word's use in this verse agrees with that analysis: a raḥim is already a place entered into. The verb and the particle agree with the root sense of the word.
The expected order would have been wa aʿadda li'ẓ-ẓālimīna ʿadhāban alīmā. The verse pulls the word ٱلظَّٰلِمِينَ in front of the verb and leaves it in the accusative.
The grammarians call this اِشْتِغَال (ishtighāl): the object is taken to the front, and the verb is then "occupied" with a pronoun referring back to it (lahum — "for them"). The function of the construction is emphasis and setting apart. In English it is answered by "as for the wrongdoers…".
And this divides the sentence in two. In the first half the verb is in front and the subject is God. In the second half the object is in front, and the group becomes a heading of its own.
In the fourth verse the group was named ٱلْكَٰفِرِين. In the thirty-first verse ٱلظَّٰلِمِين is said.
ك-ف-ر — as recorded in the discussion of al-Baqara 2/6: to cover. The fault is in the relation to knowledge; covering what one sees.
ظ-ل-م — the concrete sense of the root is darkness (ẓulma). And its second sense: to put a thing where it does not belong. This is the definition given for ẓulm in the Arabic dictionaries: waḍʿu'sh-shayʾi fī ghayri maḥallih. Here the fault has to do not with knowledge but with placing.
That the word changes at the end of the sūra agrees with the content of the sūra — I record it as my own reading:
This sūra was built from beginning to end upon being in the right place. The abrār were people who put the food they loved where it belonged: to the needy, the orphan, the captive. The other side, however, was putting a heavy day where it did not belong — behind them (27). And the thirtieth verse qualified God as حَكِيم (one who does things in their proper place).
Both mean "he prepared" and their sounds are similar. But they are separate roots and I draw no derivational link between them.
The root of aʿadda is ع-د-د: to count, to make count. ʿAdad (number), ʿidda (a counted term), istiʿdād (preparation) are from the same root. The link between preparing and counting comes from the idea of "counting out and making ready".
| 76/4 | 76/31 | |
|---|---|---|
| Word | أَعْتَدْنَا | أَعَدَّ |
| For whom | li'l-kāfirīn | li'ẓ-ẓālimīn |
| Person | First person plural: "We prepared" | Third person singular: "He prepared" |
| Length | One verse | Half a verse |
The sūra opens with a sentence of preparing and closes with a sentence of preparing. And at both ends the space allotted to this side is small.
And note the order in the last verse: mercy first, punishment after. In the fourth verse there was no order — it stood alone. Here mercy has been brought to the front.
I record this as the last link in the chain of the observation about proportion that I recorded in the section on how the sūra is built.