al-Insān 76:7

Yūfūna bi'n-nadhri wa yakhāfūna yawman kāna sharruhū mustaṭīrā "They fulfil their vows and they fear a day whose evil is spread on every side."

Here the sūra begins to recount why the abrār are abrār. Over five verses (7-10) four things will be counted: paying the vow, fearing a day, feeding food, wanting no return.

And note: all of these are things done in this world. The sūra plants this world in the middle of its description of the garden.

Root: و-ف-ي. At the centre of the root lie completeness, absence of deficiency. Its derivatives show this:

• وَفَاء — to carry out a promise in full; fidelity.
• وَافِي — complete, without deficiency.
• أَوْفَىٰ (Form IV) — to pay in full, to hand over without shortfall.
• تَوْفِيَة — full payment.
• تَوَفَّىٰ (Form V) — to take in full. And the Qurʾān recounts death with this verb: "God takes the souls at the time of their death" (al-Zumar 39/42). That is, death is, in Arabic's own logic, a collection in full.

This last derivative is worth pausing over. The same root is used both for "pay your debt in full" and for "your soul is taken in full". That paying and being taken are named with the same word agrees with the context of the verse: the next clause will speak of fearing a day.

And look at its opposite: Sūrat al-Muṭaffifīn takes the negative of this root as its subject — taṭfīf is diminishing in the measure, and at the opening of that sūra yastawfūn (they take in full) and yukhsirūn (they diminish) are set against one another. al-Insān 76/7 uses the same root on the positive side: these people do not diminish.

Root: ن-ذ-ر. This root was treated in the discussion of al-Baqara 2/6 by way of indhār (warning), and this very link was made there. I recall the finding there just as it stands:

Indhār is the announcing in advance of a bad outcome. From the same root comes nadhr — a vow. What the two have in common is the making binding, here and now, of something that has not yet come about.

And this finding is the whole key to this verse.

Nadhr is a person's binding of his own future here and now: "if such a thing happens I will do such a thing", or directly "I will do such a thing". To fill a time that has not yet come with a word given now.

Now look at the twenty-seventh verse of the sūra:

وَيَذَرُونَ وَرَآءَهُمْ يَوْمًا ثَقِيلًا — "and they leave a heavy day behind them." (76/27)

The sūra describes two types of man, and both of them set up a relation with the future:

That is, the moral distinction of the sūra is not a list of behaviours but a stance towards time. One side counts what has not yet come as binding from now; the other counts what has not come as not counting at all.

I record this as my own reading; the words of the two verses and the link between nadhr and indhār are transmitted.

The word comes with the definite article: ٱلنَّذْر — "that vow". There are two readings:

The two do not exclude one another and a preference is not required. The common point is preserved: paying something that binds oneself.

In point of legal ruling there are differences among the schools of law regarding the kinds of vow, their bindingness and their expiation. No legal ruling is issued in this commentary; the verse sets up no ruling, it describes an attribute.

Note the object of the verb: what is feared is not the punishment but the day.

This is a construction the Qurʾān uses often, and its effect is this: fear is bound not to a penalty but to a time. A penalty may remain distant and abstract; a day is something that is coming.

كَانَ شَرُّهُۥ — "its evil … was". Again kāna. The sūra qualifies a future day in the perfect. This is a choice repeated throughout the sūra (5, 7, 15, 17, 22, 30) and will be taken up separately in the section on architecture below.

Root: ط-ي-ر. To fly. Ṭāʾir — a bird; ṭayr — birds; ṭiyara — the drawing of good or ill omen by putting up a bird.

Form X (istifʿāl): ٱسْتَطَارَ — to fly apart, to be scattered in every direction, to spread. In Arabic this verb is used of a crack running along a wall, of dust dispersing into the air, of the dawn spreading over the horizon.

The word mustaṭīr occurs only here in the Qurʾān.

The picture the word chooses is this: a spreading that leaves no direction to flee in. To flee an evil is possible by going in a direction where it is not. An evil that is mustaṭīr has gone in every direction.

And this speaks directly to the question of the sister sūra:

"That day man says, 'Where is the place of flight?' No! There is no refuge!" (al-Qiyāma 75/10-11)

al-Qiyāma asks the question and gives the answer; al-Insān states the reason with an adjective: the evil has spread on every side.

And one further detail: the abrār fear this day. That is, the sūra counts fear among the attributes of the abrār. Fear is given here not as a weakness but as a measure — because the next verse will show what that fear does: it makes them feed people.