al-Nabaʾ 78:35

Lā yasmaʿūna fīhā laghwan wa lā kidhdhābā "They hear in it neither idle speech nor lying."

Verses thirty-two to thirty-four counted material things: garden, vine, companion, cup. This verse counts something of another kind: what is not heard.

And this is a choice to be noticed. The favour is related not as something given but as something absent.

This is like the method recorded in the section on Sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ: there what God is was described by saying what He is not. Here what kind of place the Garden is is described by saying what is not found in it.

Root: ل-غ-و. لَغَا — it came to nothing, it was void, it did not count.

لَغْو is speech with no force: spoken, but not taken into account, producing no consequence.

Its uses in the Qurʾān draw the word's boundary:

"God will not hold you responsible for the laghw in your oaths (the unintended word)." (al-Baqara 2/225; similarly al-Māʾida 5/89)

The laghw here is an oath-word that comes out of the mouth unintended — it has been said but has no force.

"They turn away from idle speech." (al-Muʾminūn 23/3)

"When they pass by idle speech they pass by with dignity." (al-Furqān 25/72)

"They hear in it neither idle speech nor sinful talk; only 'peace, peace'." (al-Wāqiʿa 56/25-26)

The last verse is almost identical with this one and gives a positive counterpart as well: it says what stands in the place of idle speech.

A note on the language, and a reservation. In Arabic the lexicographers differ over the relation of the word لُغَة (lugha — language, tongue) to this root. Some count it from the same root, some keep it apart. I do not enter this disagreement and I draw no meaning from this similarity of sound; I only record it.

The same word occurred in the twenty-eighth verse and there it meant "denying" (the verbal noun of kadhdhaba).

Here there is disagreement over its sense:

A variant reading is transmitted: the word is read with the doubling (كِذَّابًا) or without it (كِذَابًا). The doubled reading is the verbal noun of kadhdhaba (denying); the undoubled reading is counted another form of kidhb (a lie). Since I cannot state with certainty which authority of the variant readings held which preference, I give no name.

The second view looks more consistent with the context of the sūra, because the verse pairs it with laghw: both are faults of speech. Laghw is empty speech, kidhāb is false speech.

But the first view is meaningful too and sets up a link within the sūra: those who denied in this world (78/28) hear no denying there.

I do not impose a preference.

The counting of the two words together points to two distinct ways in which speech breaks down:

Speech can break down in two ways: by saying nothing, or by saying the wrong thing. The verse removes both.

And now go back to the beginning of the sūra.

How did the sūra open? عَمَّ يَتَسَآءَلُونَ — they question one another; the matter has turned into talk; there is disagreement (78/3).

At the opening of the sūra, that is, there was a problem of speech: a conversation that had lost its weight, that went round and round and arrived nowhere.

And at the centre of the sūra's promise to those who guard themselves stands the disappearance of the problem of speech.

I record this as my own reading. But the words of the two ends are in the text: tasāʾul in the first verse and ikhtilāf in the third; laghw and kidhāb in the thirty-fifth.

One more observation. Coming after the four material favours counted in this section, this verse is the longest sentence in the section and its only negative sentence. Garden, vine, companion, cup — all were passed over in a single word. The quality of speech took a whole verse.