al-Mursalāt 77:46

Kulū wa tamattaʿū qalīlan innakum mujrimūn "Eat, enjoy yourselves a little — you are the guilty."

From this point in the sūra the sections come down to a single verse. And the addressee changes: the preceding section told of the godwary, this verse calls directly to the deniers.

Kulū — "eat". This verb occurred in the preceding section too (verse 43).

The same verb, three verses apart, in two opposite functions.

And what produces the difference is not the verb itself but the two words set beside it: hanīʾan (with relish) and qalīlan (for a little while).

This is one of the most economical places in the sūra. By changing a single adverb, the same command ceases to be hospitality and becomes a threat.

I record this as my own reading; the wordings of the two verses are plain in the text.

Root: م-ت-ع. Matāʿ — a temporary benefit, a thing used up, a provision.

• مَتَاع — temporary goods, property, provision. The Qurʾān regularly uses this word of this world: "These are the temporary enjoyment of the life of this world" (Āl ʿImrān 3/14 — this verse was treated in the section on al-ʿĀdiyāt).
• تَمَتُّع (the tafaʿʿul form) — to benefit from something, to take one's enjoyment of it.
• مُتْعَة — temporary enjoyment.

The root's defining feature is transience. Matāʿ is not lasting property; like a traveller's provision, it runs out as it is used.

And the verse stresses this transience a second time: قَلِيلًا — a little. That is, the word itself already conveys transience, and "a little" is added on top of it.

The syntax of قَلِيلًا: it is either an adverb of time (zamanan qalīlan — a short time) or an absolute object (tamattuʿan qalīlan — a small enjoying). Both readings are recorded; there is no great difference in sense.

This manner occurs in several places in the Qurʾān and in all of them does the same work:

• "Do what you will; He sees what you do." (Fuṣṣilat 41/40)
• "Enjoy yourselves a little; then your journey's end is the Fire." (Ibrāhīm 14/30) — tamattaʿū fa-inna maṣīrakum ila'n-nār.

The second verse is almost identical with the one before us: the same verb, the same note of transience, and the judgement that follows.

The logic of the pattern is this: the imperative commands what the addressee is already doing. No one is stopped; only the name and the term of what is being done are stated.

And this is the same logic as inṭaliqū in verse 30 of the sūra: there too the addressee was already going "to what he denied"; the command only named the direction. As recorded earlier in this commentary (the sections on al-Ghāshiya and al-Ṭāriq), the limit the Qurʾān draws for the messenger is to convey, not to produce the outcome — and this manner is the expression of that limit: no intervention, only naming.

مُجْرِمُون — this word occurred in the eighteenth verse of the sūra: kadhālika nafʿalu bi'l-mujrimīn.

There it was third person and a general attribute. Here it is second person and direct: innakum mujrimūn — "you are the guilty".

And this frames one of the most important connections in the sūra.

The forty-sixth verse joins the two attributes. In the eighteenth verse it had said "thus do We deal with the guilty"; the refrain said "woe to the deniers". Now, directly to the addressee: "you are the guilty."

That is, the sūra says here that the mujrim of the rule-sentence and the mukadhdhib of the refrain are the same person.

This is the same movement recorded in the section on al-Muṭaffifīn:

The muṭaffif of the first verse and the mukadhdhib of the tenth are the same person — one named by his act, the other by his belief.

Al-Mursalāt does the same work, but keeps the chain longer: across an interval of twenty-eight verses.

The structure of the sentence is meaningful too. Innakum mujrimūn is a nominal sentence and is emphasised with inna. As recorded in the section on al-ʿĀdiyāt, a nominal sentence conveys fixity: not an event but a state.

The verse does not say "you have committed a crime". It says "you are the guilty" — it announces not the act but the position.