وَخَلَقْنَٰكُمْ أَزْوَٰجًا
In the sixth and seventh verses the verb was جَعَلَ. Here it moves to خَلَقَ, and in the next verse it will return to jaʿala.
The distinction recorded above is at work here: jaʿala conveys the arranging of what exists, khalaqa the bringing into being. And for the human being the verb of creation is used.
The question form is left behind as well: the sixth verse was "did We not make?"; this verse is a plain declarative. The grammarians explain this by saying that the question form continues in sense (that is, it means "did We not create you in pairs?"); some accept that the pattern changes where the sentence begins.
There is a trap here for the English speaker and it has to be cleared first. In Arabic زَوْج is not "a pair" but "one of a pair". A person, that is, is the zawj of his or her spouse; the two together make zawjān (two singles).
English keeps this distinction in the word spouse, which names one person, while couple and pair cover the two together. When reading the Qurʾān this difference matters.
The word's original sense is this: that which is completed by being alongside another. One is not a zawj on one's own; to be a zawj a partner is needed. The word, that is, describes a being not by itself but by its relation.
| View | Explanation | Ground |
|---|---|---|
| Male and female | The human kind was created as two mates | The most widespread use of the word; al-Najm 53/45: "He created the two mates — the male and the female" |
| Kind by kind, sort by sort | Azwāj is also used in Arabic for "types, classes"; human beings have been created in different conditions: tall and short, rich and poor, black and white | The use of azwāj in the sense of "kind" in the Qurʾān: "We caused to grow in it fine pairs of plants" (Luqmān 31/10; Qāf 50/7) |
An observation. Of the eleven items counted in this tableau, only one is the human being himself — and even that is named with a word of relation.
The earth, the mountain, sleep, the night, the day, the sky, the sun, the cloud, the grain, the garden: all of these are things outside the human being. In the eighth verse the sūra turns for a moment from outside to inside and counts the human being himself. But it counts him not as a being on his own but as a paired being.
I record this as my own reading. And I draw this conclusion: the sūra counts the human being too as a part of the tableau — that is, the human being is not a spectator standing outside the house prepared for him but a part of the furnishing of the house.
The place of this verse within the sūra's argument is plain and the Qurʾān makes it explicit elsewhere:
"Does the human being suppose he will be left to himself? Was he not a drop of spilled fluid? Then he was a clot; then [God] created him and formed him. Then He made of him the two mates, the male and the female. Is He who does this not able to bring the dead to life?" (al-Qiyāma 75/36-40)
This sequence of verses is the plain form of the argument of Sūrat al-Nabaʾ: paired creation is the proof of a second creation.
And the four-stage proof recorded at al-Baqara 2/28 worked from the same place: "You were dead and He gave you life…" — the stage objected to is the repetition of a stage that has already taken place.