79. Sūrat al-Nāziʿāt

Forty-six verses. It takes its name from its first word: ٱلنَّٰزِعَٰت. In the tradition it is also called al-Sāhira and al-Ṭāmma.

The sūra opens with five oaths, and in none of the five is it said what is being sworn by. Five active participles are set in a row — those that wrench out, those that loosen, those that swim, those that outstrip, those that direct the affair — and all of them are feminine plural. Who or what is meant is not in the text; the exegetes have debated it for fourteen centuries.

The sūra begins with this indeterminacy and ends with indeterminacy: in the last five verses the Prophet is told that he does not know the answer to a question that is being asked. "Where are you in the mention of it? Its final end belongs to your Lord."

In between there are three things: two quakings, a narrative and a table of creation.

And the backbone of the sūra lies in a single word: طَغَىٰ. The word occurs three times. First it is used of a particular person ("Go to Pharaoh; he has run beyond all bounds"), then it becomes an attribute ("whoever runs beyond bounds and prefers the life of this world"). The sūra recounts a historical figure and turns him into a measure.

There is something close to unanimity on its being Meccan. The style supports this: the opening with a series of oaths, the short verse-endings, the debate over the resurrection, the use of the narrative as evidence.

The basmala was treated in earlier sections and is not taken up again here; the verse numbers have been counted without the basmala.

Wa'l-nāziʿāti gharqā · Wa'l-nāshiṭāti nashṭā · Wa'l-sābiḥāti sabḥā · Fa'l-sābiqāti sabqā · Fa'l-mudabbirāti amrā

"By those that wrench out to the utmost · By those that loosen and draw out gently · By those that swim along · Then by those that outstrip · Then by those that direct the affair."

The subject of the oath (qasam) was set up in this commentary in the section on Sūrat al-ʿAṣr and widened out to the long series in the section on Sūrat al-Shams. The findings made there are not repeated.

In brief: in the Qurʾān an oath is not made in order to prove one's truthfulness — for the one addressed is already disputing the truthfulness of the one swearing — but in order to draw attention to something. The thing sworn by is at the same time a piece of evidence.

One datum recorded in the section on al-Shams is worth mentioning again here: the longest unbroken series of oaths in the Qurʾān is in Sūrat al-Shams (seven oaths). Al-Nāziʿāt opens with five oaths; al-Fajr, al-Mursalāt and al-Ṣāffāt are of similar length.

The structure common to the five verses is this: a definite active participle (feminine plural) + a word in the accusative.

But within the structure there are two breaks, and both are worth recording.

The first break — the connecting particles.

The first three oaths are joined with wāw, the last two with fāʾ.

In Arabic the difference between these two particles is clear:

• وَ — absolute conjunction. It announces no order; it sets up no temporal relation among the things counted.
• فَ — announces succession and order: "then, immediately after". Sometimes it announces cause and effect as well.

That is, the series of verses says this: the first three acts stand side by side, and the last two come after them.

This is a structure seen in Sūrat al-ʿĀdiyāt too: "by those that run · fa those that strike sparks · fa those that raid · fa those that raise dust · fa those that plunge into the midst" (100/1-5). There there was one wāw and four fāʾs — and as was recorded in the section on al-ʿĀdiyāt, the fāʾs were setting out a chain of action.

In Sūrat al-Mursalāt, on the other hand, there is a mixed arrangement (77/1-5).

What is to be recorded in this commentary is this: the difference of particle is in the text and it carries meaning; but since what the five oaths describe remains indeterminate, it is not possible to say with certainty what the order is ordering.

The second break — the accusative words.

The middle three oaths are strengthened by a verbal noun from their own root — in Arabic this is called the absolute object, and it reinforces the verb. English answers it with an intensifying adverb or a doubling: "loosening and loosening", "swimming and swimming", "outstripping and outstripping".

The first and the fifth oaths stand outside this pattern. In the first there is a word from a different root (gharqā); in the fifth there is an object (amrā).

That is, the series is built thus: two different on the outside, three the same on the inside. The five verses form a framed structure.

I record this as an observation. The grammatical data (which are absolute objects and which are not) can be verified; that they form a frame is an order I see.

This is one of the oldest and most open disagreements in Qurʾānic exegesis. There is no noun in the text; there are only five adjectives.

A fact recorded in the section on al-ʿĀdiyāt meets us again here: in some of the Qurʾān's series of oaths the thing sworn by is named not by its name but by its attribute (al-Mursalāt 77/1-5; al-Nāziʿāt 79/1-5; al-Ṣāffāt 37/1-3). And in all of these sūras the same disagreement has occurred.

The views:

No preference is imposed in this commentary, and the ground for that needs to be written:

One. There is no noun in the text. The Qurʾān has not chosen to give a name. To make one reading definitive would be to close a place the text deliberately left open.

Two. Every one of the views has a ground and a weak side. None of them explains all five verses with equal ease.

Three. The words themselves — to be treated one by one below — do not require a particular subject. To wrench, to loosen, to swim, to outstrip, to direct: all of these can be applied to more than one agent.

This much I can record, and I offer it as an observation: the fifth verse (فَٱلْمُدَبِّرَٰتِ أَمْرًا) is the strongest indication in favour of the angels, because "directing the affair" requires an agent with will. And the third verse (ٱلسَّٰبِحَٰت) is the strongest indication in favour of the stars, because the Qurʾān uses this verb explicitly of the heavenly bodies.

Two indications point in two different directions. This shows why the disagreement has not been resolved.

One further possibility needs to be recorded: the views do not have to exclude one another. That the Qurʾān in some places chooses comprehensive and many-sided words has been recorded several times in this commentary (the choice of ghāsiq in the section on al-Falaq was an example). It is possible that the five attributes have been left deliberately open — and in that case to look for a single equivalent would be to narrow the scope of the word.

I offer this as a possibility, not as a preference.

Root: ن-ز-ع. The concrete sense of the root is to pull a thing out of the place it is in, to tear it out. Not a gentle taking; a taking that tears loose.

Its derivatives and its uses in the Qurʾān show the force of the root:

• نَزَعَ يَدَهُ — he drew out his hand. In the narrative of Moses: "He drew out his hand, and there it was, white to the beholders" (al-Aʿrāf 7/108; al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/33). This is a verb that occurs in this sūra's own narrative.
• تَنزِعُ ٱلنَّاسَ — it was tearing people out. Of the wind that destroyed the people of ʿĀd: "tearing them out as though they were the trunks of uprooted palm trees" (al-Qamar 54/20).
• نَزَّاعَةً لِّلشَّوَىٰ — that which scorches and strips off the skin. In the description of the Fire (al-Maʿārij 70/16).
• وَنَزَعْنَا مَا فِى صُدُورِهِم مِّنْ غِلٍّ — We tore out the rancour in their breasts (al-Aʿrāf 7/43; al-Ḥijr 15/47).
• تَنزِعُ ٱلْمُلْكَ مِمَّن تَشَآءُ — You take sovereignty away from whom You will (Āl ʿImrān 3/26).
• تَنَازُع — contention; two parties pulling at a thing against one another. "Do not contend with one another, or your strength will go" (al-Anfāl 8/46).

The common core of the root: to separate a thing from the place it is stuck to. And separation always meets a resistance — this is why the verb conveys force.

The last item is also worth recording: tanāzuʿ (contention) is of the tafāʿul form and conveys reciprocity. The first word of Sūrat al-Nabaʾ (tasāʾul) was of the same form. Two neighbouring sūras describe two different relations with the same form — but in this verse there is no contending, only a one-directional pulling.

Root: غ-ر-ق. To drown, to sink in water. أَغْرَقَ — he drowned. In the Qurʾān the end of Pharaoh is spoken of with this root: "We drowned them" (al-Aʿrāf 7/136; al-Anfāl 8/54).

On the word's place in the sentence the grammarians differ:

And an idiom the lexicographers record explains the word:

أَغْرَقَ ٱلنَّازِعُ فِى ٱلْقَوْسِ — "the archer drew the bow [to its limit]."

In this idiom two things are present at once: the word نَازِع is used in the sense of archer, and إِغْرَاق describes the bow's being drawn to its furthest point.

That is, the idiom holds two words of the verse together.

The picture the idiom gives is this: the archer drawing the bow goes to a certain point; a good archer draws to the furthest point — beyond it the bow breaks. Ighrāq is that furthest point.

The word's meaning here thus becomes clear: gharqā announces not the violence of the drawing but its being carried to the end. Not a half draw; all the way down, leaving nothing behind.

I give this idiom as a usage recorded by the lexicographers; I do not ascribe it to any particular exegete.

Root: ن-ش-ط. And this root sets up the exact opposite of the first verse.

The senses of the root:

• نَشَطَ ٱلدَّلْوَ — he drew the bucket from the well. So here too there is a drawing — but of a different kind: even, flowing, without snagging.
• أَنْشَطَ ٱلْعِقَالَ — he untied the knot. Opening the knot of the rope on a camel's leg.
• نَشِيط — lively, brisk, vigorous. (In Turkish the borrowed words neşe and neşeli, "cheer, cheerful", come from this root — but the sense proper to the Arabic is liveliness and briskness.)
• نَشَاط — liveliness, activity.

The core beneath the root: to move, or to set in motion, without snagging, easily, in a flowing manner.

And the sense of untying a knot is especially important: to untie a knot is to separate the rope without breaking it. Breaking also separates the rope — but it can never be tied again.

The root appears to occur only here in the Qurʾān. I do not offer this finding as the result of an exhaustive search; what I record is that the word is rare.

Now let us set the two verses side by side. This is one of the finest places in the sūra.

The two verses describe the same task in two different manners: a thing's being separated from the place it is in.

And the difference is not in the task but in the manner. The same task is done in two distinct ways.

This is the strongest side of the "angels" view, and it is commonly explained in the classical commentaries thus: the soul of the denier is drawn out violently, the soul of the believer is taken gently. The two verses describe two manners of death.

The Qurʾān sets up this distinction elsewhere:

"If only you could see when the angels take the souls of those who disbelieved, striking their faces and their backs!" (al-Anfāl 8/50; Muḥammad 47/27)

"Those whom the angels take while they are in a goodly state…" (al-Naḥl 16/32 — ṭayyibīn)

Two verses describe the same event (the taking of the soul) in two different manners.

I record this as the reading that best fits the contrast between the two verses. But I do not impose a preference, because this reading requires accepting the "angels" view, and that view is not certain.

And this must be recorded as well — it is my own reading: what the two verses say remains the same whichever view is accepted. The same operation takes two different forms according to whom it is done to. This is the governing idea of the rest of the sūra: in verses thirty-seven to forty-one two groups will meet two different ends within the same day.

That is, the sūra sets up the idea of separation in its very first two verses, by the difference between two verbs.

Root: س-ب-ح. This root was treated in the section on Sūrat al-Naṣr and the finding there will be relied on.

What was recorded there was this: the root's original sense is to swim; when it passes into the tafʿīl form (سَبَّحَ) it takes on the sense of tanzīh — holding God apart from everything unbefitting Him. And the connection between the two senses is the lexicographers' interpretation: swimming is moving swiftly away from and through a medium; tasbīḥ likewise holds God away from deficiencies. The connection is not forced, but neither is it certain.

What is to be added here is this: in this verse the root is used in its original sense — swimming.

And the Qurʾān uses this verb explicitly of the heavenly bodies:

"It is He who created the night and the day, the sun and the moon. Each swims in an orbit." (al-Anbiyāʾ 21/33)

"It does not befit the sun to overtake the moon, nor can the night outstrip the day. Each swims in an orbit." (Yāsīn 36/40)

The second verse is striking, because it contains together the third and the fourth oaths of this sūra: to swim (yasbaḥūn) and to outstrip (sābiq). In Yāsīn it says "the night cannot outstrip the day" — the verb is سَابِقُ, the same root as this sūra's fourth oath.

This is the strongest support for the "stars" view and it was recorded in the table.

What the verb of swimming describes. To swim announces three things at once:

1. Being within a medium — what is swum in is a liquid or an air. 2. Moving by one's own power — not being dragged. 3. Going evenly and without obstruction — without snagging, without friction.

And in Arabic sabḥ is not a disorderly thrashing; it is even and continuous advance.

Root: س-ب-ق. To get ahead, to leave behind, to go forward in a race.

Its derivatives:

• سَابَقَ — he raced. "They raced" (in Yūsuf 12/17, nastabiqu — we were racing).
• سَابِق — one who goes ahead. In the Qurʾān within a classification: "…and those foremost in good deeds" (Fāṭir 35/32; also al-Wāqiʿa 56/10: "the foremost, the foremost").
• سَبْق — going ahead.
• سَبَقَتْ كَلِمَتُنَا — Our word has gone ahead (al-Ṣāffāt 37/171) — being prior in respect of time.

The word has two directions: getting ahead in a race (place) and being earlier (time). Both come out of the same idea.

Why is the fourth oath joined with fāʾ? As recorded above, fāʾ announces succession. That is, the outstripping comes after the swimming.

This ordering is meaningful: first the movement (swimming), then the result of the movement (outstripping). A thing that swims gets ahead because it swims.

Root: د-ب-ر. And the concrete sense of the root is the back.

• دُبُر — the back, the end of a thing. In the Qurʾān: "They will turn their backs and flee" (al-Qamar 54/45).
• إِدْبَار — to turn one's back, to go away. It will occur in this sūra: "Then he turned his back, hurrying" (79/22 — adbara).
• تَدْبِير — to manage a matter with its end in view; to plan, to administer.
• مُدَبِّر — one who governs, who administers.

The connection is this: tadbīr is acting with a view to the back — that is, to the end — of a matter. English carries the same thought in making provision for something: taking beforehand into account what is going to happen.

That is, the word names foresighted management. Not doing a thing at random; carrying it out knowing the outcome.

In the Qurʾān the subject of this verb is for the most part God:

"He directs the affair from the heaven to the earth." (al-Sajda 32/5)

"He directs the affair; there is no intercessor — save after His leave." (Yūnus 10/3)

"…and He is the one who directs the affair." (al-Raʿd 13/2)

And here there is a tension, and it needs to be recorded. In these verses tadbīr is ascribed to God; whereas in al-Nāziʿāt 79/5 a plural agent is named, "those that direct the affair".

The exegetes' way of resolving this tension is: the directing is God's; the angels carry out His direction. That is, the agents in the verse are not the party that decides on its own but the party that carries out a decision given.

This explanation is another datum supporting the "angels" view.

أَمْرًا — "an affair". It comes indefinite: "an affair". The indeterminacy shows that the kind of affair is not stated.

The word's place within the sūra. Amr in the Qurʾān means both "command" and "affair". In this verse the second sense comes forward.

And now we come to the most striking feature of the series: the oath has no answer.

In Arabic an oath (qasam) consists of two parts: the muqsam bihi (the thing sworn by) and the muqsam ʿalayhi (the answer of the oath — that is, the "surely such-and-such is so" part).

In this sūra the first part runs for five verses; the second part never comes at all.

The sixth verse begins with يَوْمَ تَرْجُفُ ٱلرَّاجِفَةُ — an adverb of time. Not a clause of answer.

The grammarians' solutions:

The first view is the most widespread.

And the elision itself is worth recording. The Qurʾān carries a series of oaths through five verses and does not give the answer.

Its effect is this: the tension is set up and not discharged. Through five verses the reader waits, asking "what will it say?", and instead of an answer a scene arrives.

I record this as my own reading. But that the elision is present in the text is a datum the grammarians accept unanimously.

And a connection: Sūrat al-Nabaʾ was doing the same thing. There a question was asked, its answer was not given, and in its place a table was set up. Two neighbouring sūras use the same technique in two different ways: one an unanswered question, the other an unanswered oath.

I record this parallel as an observation.

Yawma tarjufu'l-rājifa · Tatbaʿuha'l-rādifa "On the day the quaking one quakes; the one that comes behind follows it."

Root: ر-ج-ف. To be shaken violently, to tremble, to be moved from one's place.

Its derivatives and its uses in the Qurʾān:

• ٱلرَّجْفَة — a quaking, an earthquake. In the Qurʾān it is used of the peoples destroyed: "the quaking seized them" (al-Aʿrāf 7/78 — Thamūd; 7/91 — Madyan; 7/155 — the seventy chosen from the people of Moses).
• تَرْجُفُ — will quake. "On the day the earth and the mountains quake" (al-Muzzammil 73/14).
• ٱلْمُرْجِفُون — those who shake things up, who spread unrest. "The hypocrites, those in whose hearts is sickness, and those who spread agitating rumours in the city…" (al-Aḥzāb 33/60).

The last item is a linguistic datum worth recording. In Arabic إِرْجَاف means to spread baseless and shaking news — to shake things up with rumour.

That is, the root names both physical quaking and social quaking. This is an observation about the language; the use in the verse is plainly physical and I draw no allusion from it.

The word is an active participle and it is feminine: "the one that quakes (feminine)".

And this is an instance of a pattern recorded in the section on al-Qāriʿa. There the names the Qurʾān uses for the Hour were given in the form of a table and this finding was made: "All of these names have a grammatical feature in common: nearly all of them are on the active participle pattern and are feminine. That is, all of them stand in the position of 'the one that does'."

ٱلرَّاجِفَة and ٱلرَّادِفَة are added to that list. Both on the fāʿila measure, both feminine, both in the position of "the one that does".

And a third will come in the same sūra: ٱلطَّامَّة (79/34) — which was already in the table in al-Qāriʿa.

The noun qualified has been elided. Al-rājifa is an adjective; the noun it qualifies is not stated. This is the same situation as in verses one to five: there is an adjective, there is no noun described.

That is, in its first seven verses the sūra speaks throughout by attribute. I record this as an observation.

Root: ر-د-ف. To come behind someone; and especially to mount behind someone.

Its derivatives:

• رَدِيف — the one riding pillion; the one behind on the mount. A known position in Arab culture: two people ride a camel or a horse, the one in front drives, the one behind is the radīf.
• مُرْدِفِين — coming one after another. "I shall help you with a thousand angels — one following another" (al-Anfāl 8/9).
• رَدِفَ لَكُم — it has drawn near you, it has come up behind you. "Say: perhaps a part of what you seek to hasten has come up behind you" (al-Naml 27/72).

The picture the word gives is this: the second one has mounted behind the first. That is, the two do not come separately; they come joined.

The English "hard on its heels" comes near to this, but it does not give the idea of contact that is in radīf.

The first view is the most widespread and the explicit expression in al-Zumar 39/68 is its strongest support.

And the connection with the neighbouring sūra is worth recording. In al-Nabaʾ 78/18 a single blast was mentioned: "the day the trumpet is blown." Al-Nāziʿāt speaks of two quakings.

The two sūras do not conflict: al-Nabaʾ mentions the second blast (the resurrection), because it goes on to say "you will come". Al-Nāziʿāt mentions both together.

An observation: the difference of word-choice.

The two sūras describe the same event through two different senses: one is heard, the other is felt.

I record this as an observation. That the two sūras are neighbours and describe the same event with different words is a feature often seen in the Qurʾān's scenes of the Hour.

The seventh verse comes without a connecting particle: تَتْبَعُهَا ٱلرَّادِفَةُ — "the one that comes behind follows it."

The dropping of the particle (faṣl), as was treated in the section on al-Ikhlāṣ, shows that two sentences are too tightly bound to be joined by a connective.

And here this coincides exactly with the sense of the word: radīf is the one who mounts behind. That is, there is no gap between the two quakings — and there is no particle between the two verses either.

The text performs in its grammar the adjacency it describes.

I record this as my own reading; but the dropping of the particle and the sense of the word radīf are both in the text.

Qulūbun yawmaʾidhin wājifa · Abṣāruhā khāshiʿa "On that day hearts will be throbbing; their eyes downcast."

The word is indefinite: not "al-qulūb" (the hearts) but "qulūbun" (certain hearts).

This is a choice that has to be attended to. The verse does not speak of all hearts; it speaks of some hearts.

That is, as early as the eighth verse the sūra makes a distinction — but it does not say between whom the distinction falls. Whose heart is pounding and whose is not: it is not specified.

This is another instance of the principle recorded in the section on al-Qāriʿa: the sūra gives the criterion, it does not give the list.

The heart — a short note. قَلْب in the Qurʾān is not an organ of emotion; it is the centre of understanding, deciding and turning towards. Its root is ق-ل-ب, meaning "to turn, to overturn" — the heart's bearing this name is explained by its turning from state to state. In this commentary it was treated in the section on al-Baqara in connection with the sealing of the heart.

Root: و-ج-ف. And the concrete sense of the root carries the verse somewhere quite different.

وَجَفَ — to move quickly and irregularly. It is used especially of the running of a horse.

Its only other use in the Qurʾān is decisive:

"As for what God gave His Messenger as spoils from them: you spurred neither horse nor camel for it." (al-Ḥashr 59/6)

The verb there is أَوْجَفْتُمْ and it plainly means to spur a horse.

That is, the picture the verse sets up is this: hearts running like horses.

The English "the heart pounding", "the heart in one's mouth" answer to this. But the picture in the Arabic is more concrete: an animal running inside the ribcage.

The word is an active participle and it is feminine — the third feminine active participle in the first nine verses of this sūra (rājifa, rādifa, wājifa, khāshiʿa).

Root: خ-ش-ع. This root was treated at al-Baqara 2/45 and the finding there will be relied on.

What was recorded there was this: the sense of the root is to soften, to be lowered, to bend; the Qurʾān uses this root of the earth as well ("You see the earth dried up — khāshiʿa — and when We send down water upon it, it stirs and swells" — Fuṣṣilat 41/39); khushūʿ is the breaking of hardness, the softening of the shell, becoming able to take in what comes.

What is to be added here is this: in this verse the word is used of the eye.

The Qurʾān mentions the khushūʿ of eyes in several places, and all of them are in the same scene:

"Their eyes downcast, abasement covering them, they come out of the graves." (al-Maʿārij 70/44)

"Their eyes downcast, an abasement covering them…" (al-Qalam 68/43)

"With eyes downcast, they come out of the graves as though they were scattered locusts." (al-Qamar 54/7 — this verse was also mentioned in the section on al-Qāriʿa)

What does the khushūʿ of the eye mean? The bending of the eye is the falling of the gaze: not being able to look across, not being able to lift one's eyes.

And this agrees with the finding in al-Baqara: khushūʿ is the breaking of hardness. An upright gaze is a hardness; a fallen gaze shows that the hardness has broken.

In al-Baqara khushūʿ was a praised state; here it is a sign of fear. The two uses do not conflict: the word names not an attitude but a state — bentness. Whether the bending is good or bad depends on before whom and why one bends.

This is the same as the principle recorded for mabthūth in the section on al-Qāriʿa and for mihād in the section on al-Nabaʾ: a word is not in itself positive or negative.

Now read the two verses together:

Astir within, frozen without.

This is the most recognisable description of fear: the storm breaking inside appears outside only as a gaze that cannot be lifted.

And the two verses are bound to one another: the ninth verse comes to the eighth without a connective, and the pronoun أَبْصَٰرُهَا refers back to قُلُوبٌ.

A grammatical point. The expression "the eyes of the hearts" is odd in Arabic — eyes belong not to hearts but to persons.

The grammarians' explanation is this: there is here a synecdoche; by saying qulūb their owners are meant. That is, "on that day certain hearts [their owners] will throb; their eyes are downcast."

Some grammarians count this a figurative attribution. It was a similar case to the one recorded for ʿīshatin rāḍiya in the section on al-Qāriʿa.

And one further reading is possible, and I record it as my own reading: the expression reduces the person to his heart. On that day a human being is named neither by his name nor by his body but by his heart. In this scene the sūra, in describing the human being, counts first an inner organ, then an outer organ belonging to it.

Yaqūlūna a-innā la-mardūdūna fi'l-ḥāfira · A-idhā kunnā ʿiẓāman nakhira · Qālū tilka idhan karratun khāsira "They say: 'Are we really to be brought back to our former state? When we have become decayed bones?' They said: 'That, then, would be a losing return.'"

Up to the ninth verse the Day of Resurrection was being described. In the tenth verse there is a sudden return to the present tense: "they say."

That is, the sūra sets up the scene of the future and then comes back to this world and reports the one addressed as he speaks today.

This is the same thing Sūrat al-Nabaʾ does. Al-Nabaʾ too opened by reporting the speech of the one addressed ("about what are they asking one another?"). Both neighbouring sūras take the other side's own sentence into the text.

أَ (the interrogative hamza) + إِنَّ (emphasis) + نَا (we).

And there is a لَ in the sentence as well: la-mardūdūn.

That is, there are two emphases stacked in the sentence: inna and the lām.

In Arabic the presence of two emphases in a sentence shows that the sentence is said with great force. And combined with the interrogative hamza what emerges is a rhetorical question of denial: a question that seeks no answer but expresses rejection.

In English it comes out as: "So we are really to be brought back, are we?" — the tag at the end is there to show disbelief.

A note on variant readings. Differences are transmitted among the imāms of the variant readings in the pronunciation of the two hamzas in this verse (full realisation, easing, separating the second hamza with an alif, and so on). These differences do not change the meaning; since I cannot state with certainty which imām held which preference, I give no name.

Root: ر-د-د. To turn back, to return. رَدَّ — he gave back, he returned. مَرْدُود — turned back.

The word is passive, and this is worth recording. The objection is not "shall we return?" but "shall we be brought back?"

That is, those objecting know that the operation will be done to them. Their objection is not to the agent but to the possibility of the operation.

This is the most disputed word of the sūra.

Root: ح-ف-ر. To dig, to hollow out, to open a pit. حُفْرَة — a pit. حَافِر — one who digs; and a hoof (the nail of a horse or a donkey).

The relation between the two derivatives: a hoof is called ḥāfir because the animal digs the ground as it walks. A walking horse leaves a mark in the soil at every step.

Now to the views:

The first view is the most widespread and rests on the idiom.

The weak side of the second view is especially important and needs to be dwelt on: their objection is not to entering the grave but to coming out of it. The next verse confirms this: "when we have become decayed bones?" That is, they accept the decay; what they object to is the stage that comes after the decay.

I prefer the first view; it is not binding. My ground is this: the existence of the idiom is on record in Arabic and it sits directly on the meaning of the verse; the second view does not agree with the subject of the objection.

A note on the language. In Arabic an expression ٱلنَّقْدُ عِنْدَ ٱلْحَافِرَةِ is transmitted, and it is said to mean "payment in cash" — the money being paid while the animal has not stirred from its place, at the sale of a horse. Since I cannot give certain information about the currency and the exact sense of this expression, I record it as a note on the language and do not use it as evidence.

A note on variant readings. It is transmitted that the word is also read as ٱلْحَفِرَة. On this reading the sense comes closer to "pit / grave". I give no imām's name.

عِظَام — bones. The root is ع-ظ-م; and as recorded at al-Nabaʾ 78/2, this root is also the root of the word ʿaẓīm (great) — because the bone is the skeleton of the body.

The choice of bones is no accident. Bone is the part of the body that decays last. The flesh goes, the skin goes, the bone remains.

That is, the objection is built from the furthest point: after even the most durable part has decayed.

The Qurʾān records this objection in several places, and always with bone:

"When we have become bones and crumbled dust, shall we really be raised in a new creation?" (al-Isrāʾ 17/49, 98)

"He has struck for Us a similitude and forgotten his own creation: he said, 'Who will give life to the bones when they are decayed?' Say: He who brought them forth the first time will give them life." (Yāsīn 36/78-79)

"Does man suppose that We shall not gather his bones? Indeed — We are able to set in order even his fingertips." (al-Qiyāma 75/3-4)

The last verse is striking: the objection is built on bones, the answer is given by way of the fingertips — that is, a still finer detail.

نَخِرَة — Root: ن-خ-ر. And this root has two directions:

1. To decay and become hollow within. Nakhira'l-ʿaẓm — the bone decayed, its inside became a cavity. 2. A sound issuing from the nose. نَخِير — snoring, a nasal sound. مَنْخِر — a nostril.

The place where the two senses meet: a bone hollowed out within gives a sound when blown upon. A hollow thing whistles when the wind passes through it.

That is, the word describes the furthest stage of decay: not merely brittle but hollowed out within.

A variant reading is transmitted: the word is also read as نَاخِرَة (nākhira). The difference of meaning between the two readings is small; some lexicographers distinguish nakhira as "decayed" and nākhira as "hollow, giving out sound", while some count the two equivalent. Since I cannot state with certainty which imām of the variant readings held which preference, I give no name.

And an observation — my own reading: the sound-association of the word joins with the thirteenth verse of the sūra. There the resurrection will come about by a cry (zajra). A bone hollowed out within is a thing that lets sound through.

I must state that I am making this connection and am not claiming that the verse intends it. But both senses of the word do stand in the dictionary.

In the tenth verse يَقُولُونَ (imperfect — "they say"), in the twelfth verse قَالُوا۟ (perfect — "they said").

This shift has drawn the attention of the grammarians. The explanations:

The third explanation best suits the tone of the sentence: two questions are asked and then a verdict is delivered.

كَرَّة — Root: ك-ر-ر. To return, to repeat, to come back. كَرَّ — he turned back, he repeated the charge. Karra is also used as a noun of instance — "a turn, one time".

In the Qurʾān karra occurs in sentences of regret:

"If only we had a return, that we might quit them." (al-Baqara 2/167)

"If only we had a return, that we might be among the believers." (al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/102)

The same word in both verses, the same wish. And in this sūra the same word is used for mockery.

That is: the "return" made an object of mockery in this world becomes the thing begged for in the hereafter.

I record this as an observation; the shared word is a datum that can be verified.

خَاسِرَة — Root: خ-س-ر. This root was treated in detail in the section on Sūrat al-ʿAṣr and the finding there will be relied on.

What was recorded there was this: khusr is a term of accounting — the balance coming out negative, the capital diminishing. And it was compared in the section on al-Shams with khāba (failing to find what one hoped for): in khusr there is a reckoning, in khayba a hope.

Now let us look at the use here — and there is an irony in it.

They characterise the resurrection as a loss-making transaction. That is, they are making a calculation: "if we are brought back, it is a loss for us."

And they are right. The rest of the sūra confirms it: for them the resurrection really is a loss (79/39: "the Fire, that is the refuge").

But the place where the reckoning is set up is wrong. They use the resurrection's being harmful as evidence that it will not take place. Yet a thing's being harmful does not show that it will not happen.

I record this as my own reading. But the choice of the word and the rest of the sūra are in the text.

A structural note. The verse-endings of these three verses — al-ḥāfira, nakhira, khāsira — belong to the same family of sound as wājifa, khāshiʿa in the eighth and ninth verses. And so do the sixth and seventh verses: al-rājifa, al-rādifa.

That is, from the sixth verse to the fourteenth, nine verses are bound by a single sound: -ira / -ifa / -iʿa.

Fa-innamā hiya zajratun wāḥida · Fa-idhā hum bi'l-sāhira "It is but a single cry. And at once they are upon the wakeful plain."

An objection of three verses is answered with two verses. And the answer is not an argument; it is a description.

This is the same method as was recorded in the section on al-Qāriʿa: instead of continuing the dispute, the text shows the scene.

The particle فَ binds the answer to what precedes: "[is that what they say?] Then [let them know that] it is but…"

إِنَّمَا — a particle of restriction: "only, nothing but." That is, the matter is not being magnified but made small.

They had presented the resurrection as an impossible undertaking. The answer reduces the undertaking to a single sound.

Root: ز-ج-ر. To drive with the voice, to drive off with a rebuke, to direct by shouting.

And the concrete use of the root comes from herding: زَجَرَ ٱلرَّاعِى ٱلْإِبِلَ — the herdsman drove the camels with his voice. The herdsman does not touch the animal; he shouts, and the animal rises and moves.

Its derivatives:

• زَاجِر — those who drive, who drive off. In the Qurʾān: "By those who drive with a driving" (al-Ṣāffāt 37/2 — fa'l-zājirāti zajrā). This is in the same pattern as al-Nāziʿāt's series of oaths.
• اِزْدَجَرَ — he desisted, he refrained; and he was rebuked. "They denied and said 'a madman'; and he was rebuked and driven off" (al-Qamar 54/9 — wa'zdujira).
• مُزْدَجَر — a deterrent. "In them are tidings that deter" (al-Qamar 54/4).

The word's function here is striking.

In al-Nabaʾ 78/18 the same event was described with نَفْخ (a blast) — a sound produced with an instrument. Here زَجْرَة is used — the herdsman's shout to the flock.

That is, the two neighbouring sūras describe the same event with two different kinds of sound:

The picture in the second sūra is harder. Zajr is not a courteous call; it is a voice that lifts the flock from its place and admits of no objection.

And the result in al-Nabaʾ and the result here give the same idea: the crowd rises not by its own decision but because it is made to rise.

I record this as an observation. The difference between the two words and the neighbouring position of the two sūras are in the text.

That the number is specified is worth recording. The sentence does not content itself with "a cry"; it says "a single" one.

The Qurʾān often uses this emphasis in scenes of the Hour:

"It is but a single shout; and at once they are looking on." (al-Ṣāffāt 37/19)

"They await nothing but a single shout." (Yāsīn 36/49)

"Our command is but a single act, like the twinkling of an eye." (al-Qamar 54/50)

The function of the emphasis: their objection was about the difficulty of the undertaking (how are decayed bones to be gathered?). The answer does not dispute the difficulty of the undertaking; it states its duration.

And this is the Qurʾān's general posture on the resurrection. Power is not debated; the scale is changed.

Root: س-ه-ر. To stay sleepless, to remain awake at night. سَهَر — sleeplessness. سَاهِر — one who stays awake.

The word is used as the name of a place, and this oddity has drawn the attention of the exegetes.

The first three views do not exclude one another and all arrive at the same place: the open ground that is come out onto from within the grave.

And now we come to one of the most striking connections to be made in this commentary.

In al-Nabaʾ 78/9 sleep was counted as a favour: وَجَعَلْنَا نَوْمَكُمْ سُبَاتًا — "We made your sleep a cutting-off." And what was recorded there was this: the root of subāt is to cut; sleep is the cutting-off of activity. It was also recorded that sleep is spoken of in the Qurʾān as a daily death (al-Zumar 39/42; al-Anʿām 6/60).

In al-Nāziʿāt 79/14 the ground of the scene of resurrection is named ٱلسَّاهِرَة — "the sleepless one".

The two neighbouring sūras take hold of the notion of sleep from its two ends:

In this world there was sleep; there there is no sleep.

And this, joined with the sleep–death connection, says one thing more. If sleep is a daily cutting-off, and if after every cutting-off a waking comes, then the name of the last waking is al-sāhira — the place where the cutting-off ends.

I record this as my own reading. The neighbouring position of the two sūras and the root senses of the two words are in the text; the connection is mine.

إِذَا here is not a particle of condition; it is the إِذَا ٱلْفُجَائِيَّة (the idhā of surprise).

The function of this particle is this: it announces the sudden appearance of something unexpected. In English it answers to "and lo", "all at once", "and there they are".

It is widespread in the Qurʾān:

"He cast down his staff; and at once it was a manifest serpent." (al-Aʿrāf 7/107; al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/32)

"…and at once they are standing, looking on." (al-Zumar 39/68)

And the function of the particle here completes the emphasis on "single" in the thirteenth verse.

They were imagining a long and difficult operation: the gathering of bones, the clothing of them with flesh, the giving of life. The sūra finishes it in two steps: a sound, and at once.

Nothing at all is described in between. There is no process; there are only two ends.

I record this as my own reading; but the functions of the two particles (innamā wāḥida and the idhā of suddenness) are on record in grammar.

Hal atāka ḥadīthu Mūsā · Idh nādāhu rabbuhu bi'l-wādi'l-muqaddasi ṭuwā "Has the account of Moses (Mūsā) come to you? When his Lord called to him in the holy valley, Ṭuwā."

In the fourteenth verse the scene ended. In the fifteenth verse, with no connecting particle at all, a narrative begins.

And why the narrative is here will not be said until the twenty-sixth verse: "Surely in that there is a lesson for whoever feels awe."

That is, the sūra first narrates and then states its ground. This is an arrangement often seen in the Qurʾān's use of narrative.

The function of the narrative in the context is this — and I record it as a reading I draw from the structure of the sūra:

In verses ten to twelve there was an objection: "are we to be brought back?" And in verses thirteen and fourteen an answer was given.

But the answer was theoretical. The narrative makes the same matter historical: there was once someone who made this objection at the top of his voice, and what happened to him is a known thing.

That is, the narrative is not a proof; it is an example. And the sūra will say this in the twenty-sixth verse with the word ʿibra (lesson).

هَلْ — an interrogative particle. أَتَىٰ — it came, it reached.

The kind of question. This is not a question for information. It is not assumed that the Prophet does not know the narrative of Moses; the narrative is told many times in the Qurʾān.

The explanations the rhetoricians give for this pattern:

None of the three excludes the others.

The pattern occurs in several other places in the Qurʾān and always does the same work:

"Has the account of the Overwhelming come to you?" (al-Ghāshiya 88/1)

"Has the account of the hosts come to you?" (al-Burūj 85/17)

"Has the account of Abraham's honoured guests come to you?" (al-Dhāriyāt 51/24)

In all of them the pattern stands at the head of a narration.

Root: ح-د-ث. And the original sense of the root is to be new, to come into being afterwards.

• حَادِث — that which comes into being afterwards, that which is new. In the literature of theology ḥādith (that which came into being) is the opposite of qadīm (that which has no beginning).
• أَحْدَثَ — he brought forth something new. The notions بِدْعَة / مُحْدَث come from here.
• حَدِيث — speech, narration, news. The thing newly heard.

That is, in Arabic "news" and "new" are the same word. The Arabic plural ḥawādith carries the same sense; and that English news is built on new is the same logic in another language.

And now the two neighbouring sūras have to be compared.

In the section on al-Nabaʾ the difference between نَبَأ and خَبَر was treated. What was recorded there was this: nabaʾ is news that carries great benefit and produces conviction; khabar is any piece of information.

Now a third word comes: حَدِيث.

Three words hold three sides of news.

And the choices of the two neighbouring sūras are meaningful:

• al-Nabaʾ 78/2: al-nabaʾu'l-ʿaẓīm — the great tiding. Its subject is the resurrection; its weight is emphasised.
• al-Nāziʿāt 79/15: ḥadīthu Mūsā — the account of Moses. Its subject is a past event; its telling is emphasised.

And there is a subtlety here: the narrative of Moses belongs to thousands of years ago; but the word means "new".

This shows the function of the narrative: an old event becomes new every time it is told. What the narrative carries is not history but a pattern that repeats.

I record this as my own reading. But the sense of the root and the word-choices of the two sūras are in the text.

نَادَىٰ — Root: ن-د-و / ن-د-ي. To call out, to summon — especially from a distance and in a loud voice.

In Arabic nidāʾ is the opposite of a whisper. One does not make nidāʾ to someone nearby.

And the verb will occur twice in this sūra:

The same verb, two agents. One calls to a single person in the silence of the valley; the other calls to a gathered crowd.

I record this as an observation; the repetition of the word is a datum that can be verified.

رَبُّهُۥ — "his Lord". The name Allāh is not used; Rabb is used, and it is annexed to Moses.

As recorded in the section on al-Fātiḥa, Rabb carries ownership together with nurture. That is, the call comes not as a declaration of authority but from within a relationship.

And this word will occur five times in the sūra — all of them at decisive places:

The backbone of the sūra turns around this word: to whom the call was made, to whom the guiding is, who put himself in that place, of whom there is fear, to whom it belongs.

I record this as my own reading. The repetitions of the word, however, are in the text.

مُقَدَّس — Root: ق-د-س. The sense of the root is purity, cleanness. تَقْدِيس — hallowing, sanctifying; in origin purifying.

• ٱلْقُدُّوس — one of the names of God; purified of every deficiency.
• رُوحُ ٱلْقُدُس — occurs at al-Baqara 2/87.
• بَيْتُ ٱلْمَقْدِس — the purified house.

The word's place in this verse needs recording: the valley is not "holy" but "hallowed / purified" — a passive participle. That is, the holiness is not in the valley itself; it is a quality given to it.

And two verses later a word from the same field of meaning will come: تَزَكَّىٰ (to purify oneself). The valley has been purified; purification is offered to Pharaoh. The two words are from different roots (ق-د-س and ز-ك-و) but they circle the same idea.

I record this as an observation; I claim no kinship of root.

The views as to what the word is:

The first view is the most widespread.

The word occurs in one other place in the Qurʾān, in the same scene: "I am your Lord; take off your sandals, for you are in the holy valley, Ṭuwā" (Ṭāhā 20/12).

A note on variant readings. It is transmitted that the word is read with nunation (طُوًى) and without it (طُوَىٰ); the difference arises from whether the word is counted fully declinable. There is no essential change in the meaning. I give no imām's name.

Idhhab ilā Firʿawna innahu ṭaghā · Fa-qul hal laka ilā an tazakkā · Wa ahdiyaka ilā rabbika fa-takhshā "Go to Pharaoh; he has run beyond all bounds. And say: 'Would you care to purify yourself? And that I should guide you to your Lord, so that you may feel awe?'"

Root: ط-غ-ي. This root was treated in detail in the section on Sūrat al-ʿAlaq and the finding there will be relied on.

In brief: the concrete sense of the root is water's overrunning its bed; ṭughyān is a being's passing beyond its own limit; and "running beyond bounds is not possessing something bad; it is carrying something good outside its own limit."

In the section on al-ʿAlaq this was also recorded: this root is used in the Qurʾān most often of Pharaoh, and "the furthest point of ṭughyān is to put oneself in the position of lord." There the twenty-fourth verse of this sūra was cited as evidence.

What is to be added here is this: the place of كلم in the sentence.

The verse says "Go to Pharaoh, for he has run beyond bounds." That is, the running beyond bounds is given as the ground for going.

This may look inverted: why go to someone who has run wild? What one would expect is to keep away.

But the sūra makes it a ground for a call. And the next verse shows how the ground works: the going is not to punish but to offer purification.

I record this as my own reading. But the order of the two verses is in the text.

The verb's coming in the perfect. Ṭaghā — "he has run beyond bounds", past tense. That is, the running beyond bounds is a completed, settled condition. Not something still in the making.

And one of the most unexpected sentences of the sūra is here.

هَلْ لَكَ إِلَىٰ كَذَا is in Arabic a pattern of offer: "would you care for this?", "would you like this?"

Within the pattern a noun is implicit; understood: "hal laka [raghbatun / maylun] ilā…" — "have you [any wish / inclination] towards this?"

That is, the sentence is not a command but a question; not a threat but an invitation.

And this is worth recording when one considers who is being addressed. Moses goes before a ruler who has declared himself a god and has had the children of the Israelites killed, and his first sentence is an offer.

The Qurʾān describes this scene more explicitly in another sūra:

"Go, both of you, to Pharaoh; he has run beyond bounds. Speak to him a gentle word; perhaps he will take heed or fear." (Ṭāhā 20/43-44)

The expression there is قَوْلًا لَّيِّنًا — a gentle word. And a ground is given as well: "perhaps he will take heed or fear."

What emerges when the two sūras are read together is this: even to the most extreme instance of running beyond bounds an offer is carried first, and the offer is made in a gentle manner.

And the word "perhaps" (لَعَلَّ) in Ṭāhā is worth recording too. As was treated in the section on al-Nabaʾ, laʿalla is used for what is possible; layta for what is impossible. That is, Pharaoh's taking heed is counted possible.

This is so despite the verdict at the end of the sūra. We know the outcome of the offer (79/21: "he denied and disobeyed"), but the offer itself is made as a real offer.

Root: ز-ك-و. This root was treated in detail in the section on Sūrat al-Shams and the finding there will be relied on.

What was recorded there was this: beneath the root there are two senses at once and they are inseparable — cleanness/purification and growth/increase. The dictionaries do not divide these into separate entries. And the expression "he purified his self" remains half-said when rendered only as "he cleansed": "he purified his self and thereby made it grow."

In the section on al-Shams this distinction was also drawn:

Now let us come to this verse and record a grammatical difference.

In al-Shams the verb had an object; here it has none.

The tafaʿʿul form announces the act's returning upon the agent: the person does the act to himself. And it generally announces gradualness as well: not all at once but by degrees.

That is, the offer is: "would you care to purify yourself?" — not an operation that happens at a stroke but a process.

And this joins with the distinction made in the section on al-Shams. There what was forbidden was declaring oneself pure. Here what is offered is purifying oneself. The two verbs are from the same root, but one is a claim and the other a work.

Pharaoh's case sharpens this distinction particularly. He is the one who will make the greatest claim about himself (79/24: "I am your most high lord"). What is offered is not a claim but a work.

I record this as my own reading. But the difference of form between the two verbs and the finding in al-Shams are in the text.

A note on variant readings. It is transmitted that the verb is read in an assimilated form (تَزَّكَّىٰ); the meaning is the same. I give no imām's name.

هَدَىٰ — Root: ه-د-ي. To show the way, to guide to the right road. This root was treated in detail in the section on al-Fātiḥa.

The verb comes in the subjunctive (ahdiya), because it is coupled to the أَن in the previous verse: "[would you care] to purify yourself and that I should guide you?"

رَبِّكَ — "your Lord".

And here is one of the sharpest sentences of the sūra.

To Pharaoh it is said "your Lord". The man who is going to declare himself lord is reminded that he has a Lord.

And this is directly connected with the finding recorded for رَبِّ ٱلْعَٰلَمِين in the section on al-Fātiḥa. What was written there was: "To say 'Lord of all the worlds' is at the same time to say that no human being is the lord of another human being. The sentence has a political side as much as a theological one." And there the sequel of this verse (79/24) was cited as evidence.

Al-Nāziʿāt 79/19 gives the other half of that finding: the man who makes the claim to lordship has a Lord himself.

The claim does not change the fact. Pharaoh may declare himself lord; but this does not mean that he has no Lord.

I record this as my own reading; the words of the two verses (19 and 24) are, however, in the text.

Root: خ-ش-ي. To fear — but of a particular kind.

The distinction the lexicographers record:

I record this distinction as a finding made by the lexicographers; I do not claim that it works rigidly everywhere.

There is a verse in the Qurʾān that supports this distinction:

"Of His servants, only the learned feel awe of God." (Fāṭir 35/28)

That is, awe is the result of knowledge.

And now look at the word order of the verse.

The sentence runs: "that I may guide you to your Lord, so that you may feel awe."

فَ here announces a result. That is, the order is:

Guiding → knowing → awe.

Awe is positioned not as a beginning but as a result.

This is a choice worth recording. The expected order could have been the reverse: "first fear, then believe." The verse turns this around: first know, and let the fear be born of that.

And this agrees with the sense of the word itself: khashya is fear grounded in knowledge; without knowledge there is no awe.

I record this as my own reading. But the fāʾ's announcing a result, and Fāṭir 35/28, are in the text.

The word's distribution in the sūra. The root خ-ش-ي occurs three times in this sūra:

Three occurrences, in the three parts of the sūra: in the narrative, in the verdict of the narrative, and at the end of the sūra.

And what the three set up is this: awe is the measure of the sūra. The narrative is a lesson to whoever feels awe; the warning reaches whoever feels awe; and what was offered to Pharaoh was to arrive at awe.

I record this as an observation; the repetitions of the word are a datum that can be verified.

Fa-arāhu'l-āyata'l-kubrā · Fa-kadhdhaba wa ʿaṣā "So he showed him the greatest sign. But he denied and disobeyed."

And now attend to the sūra's technique of narration.

From the seventeenth verse to the twenty-fifth there are nine verses, and all of them are joined with فَ:

fa-qul (18) · fa-arāhu (20) · fa-kadhdhaba (21) · thumma adbara (22) · fa-ḥashara (23) · fa-qāla (24) · fa-akhadhahu (25)

Seven fāʾs, one thumma. And fāʾ, as recorded above, announces succession: immediately after.

That is, the narrative flows without drawing breath. An offer, a miracle, a denial, a turning away, an assembly, a claim, a seizing.

And there are things not told in between. Moses's going to Egypt, his entering the palace, his encounter with the magicians, the parting of the sea — none of them is there. The Qurʾān tells this narrative at length in other sūras (al-Aʿrāf 7/103-137; Ṭāhā 20/9-79; al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/10-68); here it fits it into nine verses.

The scenes chosen are these: the call, the offer, the miracle, the refusal, the claim, the punishment.

That is, the sūra takes from the narrative only the course of the running beyond bounds. It leaves the rest.

I record this as an observation; the connecting particles of the verses and their content are in the text.

Which sign? The exegetes differ:

I impose no preference. What is to be recorded is this: the verse says "the greatest"; that is, what was shown was the highest of what could be shown.

The verb is not "he saw" but "he showed". Arā (Form IV) — to show. That is, Pharaoh did not see; it was shown to him. It was actively set before him.

This agrees with the finding recorded at al-Baqara 2/6: "unbelief is not not-knowing; it is covering over what one knows." And there a verse concerning this narrative was cited: "You have certainly known that none has sent these down but the Lord of the heavens and the earth" (al-Isrāʾ 17/102).

That is, Pharaoh's case is not ignorance. The sign was shown, he saw it, and he denied.

Two verbs, two distinct levels:

عَصَىٰ — Root: ع-ص-ي. And the concrete sense of the root is worth recording: عَصَا (ʿaṣā) — a staff, a stick.

The connection the lexicographers set up is this: عَصَى ٱلْقَوْمُ — "the group parted from one another, dispersed"; and عَصَا is the staff that symbolises unity. In Arabic "to break the staff" (شَقَّ ٱلْعَصَا) means to part from the community.

That is, the idea beneath ʿiṣyān is parting, breaking away — going out of the circle of obedience.

And a coincidence is worth recording: the view is widespread that the sign shown to Pharaoh was the staff. And his response is described with a verb from the root of staff: ʿaṣā (he disobeyed).

This is not a claim of wordplay and I do not claim that the two words are from the same root — ʿaṣā (staff) and ʿaṣā (he disobeyed) are treated in the classical dictionaries under the same root letters, but the lexicographers are not in agreement as to whether they derive from a single root. I do not enter this disagreement and I draw no meaning from this coincidence of sound; I merely record it.

The order is meaningful. First the denial (inner), then the disobedience (outer). At al-Nabaʾ 78/27-28 there was the same order: first "they did not expect a reckoning" (inner), then "they denied" (outer).

Two neighbouring sūras set up the same ordering with two different pairs: the inner attitude comes first.

Thumma adbara yasʿā · Fa-ḥashara fa-nādā · Fa-qāla ana rabbukumu'l-aʿlā "Then he turned his back, hurrying. He gathered and called out. And he said: 'I am your most high lord.'"

أَدْبَرَ — Root: د-ب-ر. And this root occurred in the fifth verse of the sūra as مُدَبِّرَات.

What was recorded above was this: the concrete sense of the root is the back; tadbīr is acting with a view to the end of a matter.

Now let us set the two uses side by side:

The same root, in two opposite directions. One advances with a view to the end; the other turns his back and goes.

I record this as an observation. The shared root is a linguistic datum that can be verified; I do not claim that there is a deliberate link between the two verses.

يَسْعَىٰ — Root: س-ع-ي. To run, to walk quickly, to exert oneself.

The word stands as a circumstantial accusative: "running, in a state of running".

In the Qurʾān this root is used both positively and negatively:

• "When the call to prayer is made on the day of congregation, hasten to the remembrance of God." (al-Jumuʿa 62/9)
• "And a man came running from the far side of the city." (Yāsīn 36/20)
• "When he turns away, he strives to spread corruption in the land." (al-Baqara 2/205)

That is, running is not in itself good or bad; it depends on where one runs.

And this root will come back later in the sūra:

"On that day man remembers what he strove for." (79/35 — mā saʿā)

The link between the two verses is worth recording:

The sūra first shows one person's running; then it says that everyone's running will be remembered.

I record this as an observation; the repetition of the word is in the text.

The function of ثُمَّ. This verse is joined with the only thumma in the series — the others are fāʾ.

Thumma, unlike fāʾ, announces an interval: not immediately after, but after some time.

That is, a period of time has passed between the denial and the turning of the back. Some of the grammarians read this also as a difference of rank (treated in the section on al-Nabaʾ): the second verb is graver than the first.

حَشَرَ — Root: ح-ش-ر. To gather together, to drive and assemble.

And this is a word-choice worth recording.

In the Qurʾān حَشْر is almost always used of the gathering on the Day of Resurrection:

"On that day We gather them and leave not one of them." (al-Kahf 18/47)

"Warn with it those who fear that they will be gathered before their Lord." (al-Anʿām 6/51)

"The day We shall gather them all…" (Yūnus 10/28)

And the word has become the name of a sūra: al-Ḥashr (59).

Now let us come back to this verse: the agent is Pharaoh.

Pharaoh gathers — that is, he does on his own scale the thing God will do on the Day of Resurrection: he assembles the people, comes out before them, makes his proclamation.

I record this as my own reading and I must state its limit as well: the word ḥashr is not used in Arabic only of the Resurrection; it means "to gather" generally and occurs in the Qurʾān in other contexts too (for instance at al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/36-53, Pharaoh's gathering of the magicians). That is, the use of the word here is not by itself an allusion.

What I record is this: the thing Pharaoh does — gathering, coming out before them, proclaiming a verdict — is in its structure an imitation of a courtroom scene. And this agrees with the description of ṭughyān recorded in the section on al-ʿAlaq: putting oneself in that place.

فَنَادَىٰ — he called out. As recorded above, the same verb was used in the sixteenth verse of the Lord's calling to Moses.

The difference between the two callings:

An observation: the calling that is real is made to a single person and in a solitude; the calling that is a claim is made to a crowd and in a public place.

I record this as my own reading. But the elements of the two verses are in the text.

The most extreme claim the Qurʾān records.

And the most striking word of the sentence is ٱلْأَعْلَىٰ.

Root: ع-ل-و. Height. أَعْلَىٰ — an elative: higher, highest.

And an elative requires a comparison.

That is, Pharaoh does not say "I am lord." He says "I am your most high lord." This does not deny the existence of other lords — it claims to be above them.

This is the exact description of the structure of pre-Islamic associationism and it was recorded in the section on al-Fātiḥa: "The Arab of the age of ignorance was no stranger to the concept of 'lord'; but the lords were divided — every tribe, every oasis, every trade route had its own lord."

In Egypt the situation was similar: there was a polytheistic system and the pharaoh was positioned at the top of that system.

That is, Pharaoh's claim is not a claim of "one god"; it is a claim of hierarchy.

And this explains why the Qurʾān calls him ṭāghī (one who runs beyond bounds). According to the description in the section on al-ʿAlaq, ṭughyān is exceeding the limit. Pharaoh does not invent godhood; he exceeds his own limit and enters that category.

The Qurʾān records this claim elsewhere as well:

"Pharaoh said: 'O chiefs! I know of no god for you other than myself.'" (al-Qaṣaṣ 28/38)

The difference between the two sentences is worth recording and will be taken up in the twenty-fifth verse.

And the sequel of the finding in the section on al-Fātiḥa is completed here. What was recorded there was: "When Moses spoke to him of the 'Lord of all the worlds', Pharaoh's answer is a question: 'And what is the Lord of all the worlds?' (al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/23). The question is not a request for information but a rejection — because if the worlds have a Lord, Pharaoh's lordship falls."

Al-Nāziʿāt 79/24 and al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/23 are two sentences of the same man and they explain one another: one proclaims his own position, the other rejects the concept that would abolish that position.

A note on the sound. The word ٱلْأَعْلَىٰ is used in the Qurʾān of God as well: "Glorify the name of your Lord, the Most High" (al-Aʿlā 87/1); "…except him who seeks the pleasure of his Lord, the Most High" (al-Layl 92/20 — treated in the section on al-Layl in this commentary).

That is, the same epithet occurs in the Qurʾān both for God and in Pharaoh's claim. The difference is that for the one it is an attribute and for the other a claim.

I record this as an observation; the shared word is a datum that can be verified.

Fa-akhadhahu'llāhu nakāla'l-ākhirati wa'l-ūlā · Inna fī dhālika la-ʿibratan li-man yakhshā "So God seized him with the punishment of the last and of the first. Surely in that there is a lesson for whoever feels awe."

And this is the only place in the sūra where the name Allāh occurs.

Through forty-six verses the sūra uses Rabb (five times), pronouns and verbal subjects; al-Raḥmān does not occur. The name ٱللَّه occurs in this verse alone.

And precisely immediately after the verse in which Pharaoh said "I am your most high lord."

This is an observation and a datum that can be verified. Its interpretation is this, and it belongs to me: the claim is met with a name. Pharaoh claims lordship; in the very next sentence the name God appears.

أَخَذَ — Root: أ-خ-ذ. To take, to seize, to grasp.

In the Qurʾān this verb is often used in the context of destruction and the word announces a sudden and inescapable seizing:

"I seized them; and how was My retribution!" (al-Raʿd 13/32; al-Ḥajj 22/44)

"Such is the seizing of your Lord when He seizes the towns while they are doing wrong. His seizing is painful and severe." (Hūd 11/102)

Root: ن-ك-ل. And the sense of the root separates this word from an ordinary "punishment".

نَكَلَ عَنْ — he held back, he shrank, he did not dare. نِكْل — a fetter, a bit, a hobble; the iron that holds an animal or a captive. نَكَال — a punishment that deters others.

That is, nakāl is not the punishment itself but the deterrent function of the punishment.

A punishment given to an offender does two things: the first pays what is owed, the second deters others. Nakāl names the second.

Another verse of the Qurʾān says this explicitly:

"We made it a nakāl for those before it and those after it, and an admonition for those who guard themselves." (al-Baqara 2/66)

There the word plainly means "a lesson for others": "for those before it and those after it."

And this prepares the next verse: "Surely in that there is a lesson."

Two verses say the same idea with two words: nakāl and ʿibra. The punishment is not only about Pharaoh; it is about those who see.

There are two views on this construction:

The first view is the most widespread.

The second view is striking and deserves recording, because the Qurʾān really does record two distinct claims of Pharaoh and there is an escalation between them:

• al-Qaṣaṣ 28/38: "I know of no god for you other than myself." — This is a sentence not about himself but about his knowledge. An implicit claim.
• al-Nāziʿāt 79/24: "I am your most high lord." — A direct claim.

That is, the claim has become open with time. And this agrees with the description of ṭughyān recorded in the section on al-ʿAlaq: the limit is not crossed at one stroke but by degrees.

I prefer the first view; it is not binding. My ground: the verse speaks not of an interval of time but of two punishments, and the pair ākhira/ūlā is widely used in the Qurʾān for this world and the hereafter.

The escalation the second view records, however, is separately valuable and can be verified by comparing the two verses.

عِبْرَة — Root: ع-ب-ر. And the concrete sense of the root is to cross over.

Its derivatives:

• عَبَرَ ٱلنَّهْرَ — he crossed the river. عُبُور — a crossing.
• عَابِرُ سَبِيلٍ — a traveller; one passing along a road. In the Qurʾān: "…except while passing along a way" (al-Nisāʾ 4/43).
• تَعْبِيرُ ٱلرُّؤْيَا — the interpretation of dreams. It occurs in the narrative of Joseph (Yūsuf 12/43: "if you can interpret dreams"). To interpret a dream is to cross from the image to the meaning.
• عِبَارَة — an expression; speech that carries a meaning across.
• عَبْرَة — a tear; the drop that overflows and crosses from the eye.

The common core of the root: to cross from one bank to the other.

And ʿibra is exactly this: to cross from the event to the verdict.

An event is not by itself a lesson. A lesson arises when one crosses from the visible face of the event to its invisible face. Pharaoh's drowning is an event; to draw a measure from it is a lesson.

The Qurʾān uses this word in several places and it always does the same work:

"O you who have insight! Take the lesson." (al-Ḥashr 59/2 — fa'-ʿtabirū)

"Surely in their stories there is a lesson for those who have insight." (Yūsuf 12/111)

"And in the cattle there is surely a lesson for you." (al-Naḥl 16/66; al-Muʾminūn 23/21)

The last example is worth recording: the lesson is taken not only from a narrative but from nature as well. And this prepares the next section (79/27-33, the table of creation).

And the verdict of the narrative is limited by a qualification.

The verse does not say "in that there is a lesson"; it says "in that there is a lesson for whoever feels awe."

That is, the lesson is not in the event; it is in the eye of the one looking.

When the same event is told to two people, it becomes a lesson to one and not to the other. The difference is not in the event but in the one looking.

This is the same as the finding recorded at al-Baqara 2/26. There, in the discussion of the example of the gnat, this was treated: "the same text, two results" — the same verse was a cause of guidance for one and of straying for another.

And this prepares the last verses of the sūra:

"You are only a warner to whoever feels awe of it." (79/45)

The two verses set the same qualification: the lesson to whoever feels awe, the warning to whoever feels awe.

I record this as an observation; the repetition of the word is in the text.

A question and an honest answer. This qualification may look as though it sets up a vicious circle: if awe is needed in order to take a lesson, how is awe to arise?

The verse answers this question — but elsewhere in the sūra. In the nineteenth verse the order was: guiding → knowing → awe. That is, awe is not a precondition; it is the result of a process.

I record this connection as my own reading. But the words of the two verses (19 and 26) are in the text.

The "question of the vicious circle" recorded at al-Baqara 2/2-5 holds here too and the answer given there may be repeated: the text opens to the one who is open to it; it stays closed to the one who is closed. This is not a decree of destiny but a description of reading.

A-antum ashaddu khalqan ami'l-samāʾ · Banāhā · Rafaʿa samkahā fa-sawwāhā · Wa aghṭasha laylahā wa akhraja ḍuḥāhā · Wa'l-arḍa baʿda dhālika daḥāhā · Akhraja minhā māʾahā wa marʿāhā · Wa'l-jibāla arsāhā · Matāʿan lakum wa li-anʿāmikum

"Are you harder to create, or the heaven? He built it: He raised its height and set it in order; He darkened its night and brought forth its forenoon. And the earth, after that, He spread out: from it He brought forth its water and its pasture; and the mountains He set firm — as a provision for you and for your cattle."

The narrative is over. And immediately after the word ʿibra in the twenty-sixth verse the sūra asks a question.

And the question returns to the objection in the twelfth verse. They had said "when we have become decayed bones?" The twenty-seventh verse answers: "Are you harder to create, or the heaven?"

That is, the sūra has placed a narrative of twelve verses between the objection and its answer. And when the narrative is over it returns to the argument where it left off.

This is the same structure as what Sūrat al-Nabaʾ does: there too there was an objection, and by way of answer a table of creation was set up (78/6-16).

A comparison of the two tables will be made below in a separate section.

The logic of the question: one who can make the greater can make the lesser. In logic this is called the argument a fortiori (from the stronger).

أَشَدُّ — Root: ش-د-د. And this root was used of the heaven at al-Nabaʾ 78/12: سَبْعًا شِدَادًا — seven firm ones.

What was recorded there was this: the concrete sense of the root is to bind, to bind tightly; shidād means that which does not slacken.

And now the two neighbouring sūras side by side:

The two sūras use the same two roots for the heaven — in reverse order and in a different mood.

This is one of the most concrete verbal links between the two sūras and it is a datum that can be verified. That the order has been reversed is, however, an observation.

خَلْقًا — in the accusative as a specifying complement: "in respect of creation".

The Qurʾān sets up this argument more explicitly elsewhere:

"The creation of the heavens and the earth is greater than the creation of mankind; but most people do not know." (Ghāfir 40/57)

"Is not He who created the heavens and the earth able to create the like of them? Indeed He is." (Yāsīn 36/81)

بَنَىٰهَا is a separate sentence (istiʾnāf) and stands as though it were the answer to the question: "…or the heaven? — He built it."

Some of the grammarians count it an adjective of al-samāʾ; some count it an independent sentence. The second is the more widespread.

And the series of verbs begins here. From the twenty-eighth verse to the thirty-second there are eight verbs, and all have the same agent, all are in the perfect, all are third person singular:

banā · rafaʿa · sawwā · aghṭasha · akhraja · daḥā · akhraja · arsā

And the object of all of them ends in a pronoun: banāhā, sawwāhā, daḥāhā, arsāhā…

This also sets up the verse-ending of the sūra: -āhā. With the exception of the thirty-third verse.

سَمْك — Root: س-م-ك. The height of a structure, the distance of its roof from the ground.

The lexicographers distinguish thus: samk is the distance measured from above downwards; that is, the "depth" of a building.

A note. The word سَمَك (fish) is also written with the same letters. The lexicographers treat these separately and I set up no connection between them.

And the construction is worth recording: "He raised its height." The sentence does not say "He raised the heaven"; it says He raised "its height".

That is, the heaven was already high; its height was increased. Or: the height of the heaven is a measure given to it.

I record this as an observation about the language.

Root: س-و-ي. This root was treated in the section on Sūrat al-Shams and what was recorded there is not repeated.

In brief: سَوَّىٰ — to set in order, to bring into balance, to make things equal to one another. At al-Shams 91/7 it was used of the self: "by the self and Him who set it in order"; and it was recorded there that the verb is repeated at the two ends of that sūra (at 91/14 in the sense of "He levelled it flat").

What is to be added here is this: the verb is joined with فَ — that is, the setting in order comes after the raising.

The order is meaningful: first the measure is given, then the balance is set. The building first rises, then is levelled.

And the verb is used of the heaven in several places in the Qurʾān:

"Then He turned to the heaven and set them in order as seven heavens." (al-Baqara 2/29 — fa-sawwāhunna; this verse was treated in this commentary)

Root: غ-ط-ش. To be dark; أَغْطَشَ (Form IV) — He made dark, He darkened.

The root appears to occur only here in the Qurʾān. I do not offer this finding as the result of an exhaustive search.

And that the verb is transitive is worth recording.

The verse does not say "night fell" or "darkness came down". It says "He darkened" — that is, the darkness is not an emptiness formed of itself by the withdrawal of light; it is something done.

This coincides with the finding recorded for غَاسِق in the section on Sūrat al-Falaq. What was written there was: "In the conception carried by this Arabic root, darkness is not something that 'happens' but something that flows. Not the cutting-off of light, but the pouring of darkness."

Al-Nāziʿāt 79/29 gives the same idea with another root and more explicitly: darkness is made.

I record this as an observation; the two roots are different and I claim no kinship between them.

ضُحَىٰ — Root: ض-ح-و. This root was treated in detail in the section on Sūrat al-Ḍuḥā and the finding there will be relied on.

In brief: ḍuḥā is the forenoon, when the sun has risen and the light has spread fully.

The contrast between the two verbs:

Both verbs are transitive and both are of the ifʿāl form. That is, both darkness and light are things done.

And a grammatical point: the pronouns.

Laylahā — "its night". Ḍuḥāhā — "its forenoon".

The pronouns refer back to the heaven. That is, night and day are ascribed not to the earth but to the heaven.

This is a striking choice. Night and day are experienced in the place where a person lives; but the verse counts them attributes of the heaven.

I record this as an observation. And I add a reading, stating that it is mine: night and day are the business of the heaven, not of the earth — that is, they are part of an order not under human control. The same idea was counted as a favour at al-Nabaʾ 78/10-11; here it becomes a question of ownership.

دَحَىٰ — Root: د-ح-و / د-ح-ي. To spread, to lay out, to spread flat.

This word was mentioned in the section on al-Shams: there, in treating طَحَا (ṭaḥā — al-Shams 91/6), it was recorded that daḥā is very close to it both in sound and in meaning and that the lexicographers count the two near to one another.

There is no disagreement about the meaning of the word: to spread, to level out and lay flat.

This word is one of the Qurʾānic words most strained in the modern period and the rule recorded in the method (Method) will be applied here.

The ground of the straining is this: in Arabic there is the word أُدْحِيَّة (udḥiyya) and it names the place where the ostrich lays its eggs. Setting out from this, it is argued that the verb daḥāhā means "He made it egg-shaped" and that the verse announces the sphericity of the earth.

I do not accept this reading and I must write out the grounds:

One — the word names not the egg but the nest. Udḥiyya is not the ostrich's egg itself; it is the hollow in which it lays. And the ostrich opens that hollow by spreading the soil with its foot. That is, the word confirms the original sense of the root (to spread) — it does not take us away from it.

Two — the verb itself does not give this sense. Daḥā means "He spread". Udḥiyya is a noun derived from this verb and its sense is "a hollow opened by spreading". The road that runs from verb to noun cannot be run backwards from noun to verb.

Three — it ruins the argument. As was recorded in the section on al-Nabaʾ, the function of this table is to enumerate things the one addressed can verify. Something that cannot be verified cannot be used as evidence.

Four — the word's context in the sūra does not support it. The continuation of the verse is this: "from it He brought forth its water and its pasture." That is, the verse speaks not of the shape of the earth but of its being made usable.

Is there a tension between the earth's being spherical and the Qurʾān? There is not — and that is a separate question. The Qurʾān issues no ruling about the shape of the earth. What was recorded for firāsh (a bed) at al-Baqara 2/22 holds here too: "this expression does not say that the earth is flat… What the word says is not shape but function."

The verse does not state the shape of the earth; neither that it is flat nor that it is round. To make the text say something in either direction is a strain.

And here is one of the old questions of Qurʾānic exegesis.

This verse describes the creation of the heaven and then says "and the earth after that He spread out".

But the Qurʾān appears to give a different order elsewhere:

"It is He who created for you all that is on the earth. Then He turned to the heaven and set them in order as seven heavens." (al-Baqara 2/29)

"Say: do you really deny Him who created the earth in two days, and set up equals to Him?… Then He turned to the heaven while it was smoke." (Fuṣṣilat 41/9-11)

In al-Baqara and in Fuṣṣilat the earth is first and the heaven after; in al-Nāziʿāt the heaven is first and the earth after.

The exegetes' solutions:

The second view is the most widespread and it has a support in the text: the verb used for the earth in al-Nāziʿāt is دَحَىٰ (He spread out), whereas the verb used in al-Baqara is خَلَقَ (He created). Two different verbs, two different operations.

The third view also deserves to be taken seriously and agrees with a principle recorded several times in this commentary: the Qurʾān is not a textbook of cosmology; the verses set up evidence within their own contexts.

I prefer the second view; it is not binding. My ground: the difference of verb stands in the text and the solution comes from the text itself.

And a warning: claims of the sort "the Qurʾān announced the order of the universe's formation" should not be built out of this ordering. The verses do not give a timetable; and that the exegetes are not even in agreement about how the ordering is to be understood shows this.

أَخْرَجَ — this verb occurs in these verses for the second time: in the twenty-ninth verse "He brought forth its forenoon", here "He brought forth its water and its pasture."

And the verb had occurred at al-Nabaʾ 78/15 as well: "that We may bring forth with it grain and plants." What was recorded there was this: this verb is at the very centre of that sūra's argument, because the Qurʾān describes the resurrection with the same verb (Nūḥ 71/17-18; al-Rūm 30/19; Fāṭir 35/9).

The same note holds here too and is not repeated.

مَرْعَىٰ — Root: ر-ع-ي. And the two branches of this root carry a shared element worth recording:

1. To pasture, to graze. مَرْعَىٰ — pasture. رَعِيَّة — a flock. 2. To watch over, to keep. رَاعٍ — a shepherd; and one who watches over. رِعَايَة — watching, tending.

The connection the lexicographers set up: the shepherd, while pasturing the flock, at the same time watches over it. The two tasks are inseparable.

And the Qurʾān uses the second sense: "Those who keep their trusts and their covenants" (al-Muʾminūn 23/8; al-Maʿārij 70/32 — rāʿūn).

This is an observation about the language. The meaning of the word in this verse is plainly "pasture".

The ordering of مَاء and مَرْعَىٰ. First water, then pasture. The order is natural: pasture is the result of water. And at al-Nabaʾ 78/14-16 there was the same order: first water, then grain and plants, then gardens.

Root: ر-س-و. To make firm, to fix in place, to cast anchor.

Its derivatives:

• رَاسِيَات — those that are fixed. "…and cauldrons fixed in place" (Sabaʾ 34/13).
• مُرْسَىٰ — the place or the time of anchoring. In the Qurʾān: "Embark in it; its sailing and its anchoring are in the name of God" (Hūd 11/41 — majrāhā wa mursāhā, of Noah's ark).

The nautical sense of the word is decisive: irsāʾ is a ship's casting anchor. The bringing to a halt of something that moves.

And now we come to the most striking internal link of this sūra.

The same root comes back in the forty-second verse of the sūra:

"They ask you about the Hour: when will it cast anchor?" (79/42 — ayyāna mursāhā)

The same root, at the two ends: in the table of creation and in the closing question of the sūra.

And what the link sets up is this: the mountains have been set firm — that is, their time of anchoring is past and is known. The Hour, on the other hand, has not yet cast anchor, and its time is being asked about.

This is a repetition of a word that can be verified. The meaning the link sets up is, however, my own reading.

And the image of the ship gives the forty-second verse a flavour: the question "when will the Hour cast anchor?" is like asking when a ship that is under way will enter harbour. The forty-fourth verse will give the answer: "Its final end belongs to your Lord."

A note about the mountains. The warning recorded for أَوْتَاد (pegs) at al-Nabaʾ 78/7 holds here too and is not repeated: the verse names the function of the mountains, not their geological structure; and to draw a modern theory out of it is a strain.

The two verbs the two sūras use for the mountains are worth recording:

The two sūras describe the same function with two different images. One from the tent of the land, the other from seafaring.

And the table closes with a ground.

مَتَاع — Root: م-ت-ع. To benefit, to make use of. مَتَاع — a thing made use of, a means of livelihood.

And the word's use in the Qurʾān carries a qualification:

"The life of this world is nothing but the enjoyment of delusion." (Āl ʿImrān 3/185 — matāʿu'l-ghurūr)

"This life of the world is only an enjoyment; the hereafter is the abiding home." (Ghāfir 40/39)

"…a little enjoyment; then their abode is the Fire." (Āl ʿImrān 3/197)

In the Qurʾān the word almost always carries a qualification of transience. Matāʿ is not what is owned but what is used; it is the provision a traveller carries with him.

That is, the closing sentence of the table carries the table's transience in its own word.

This is the counterpart in this sūra of the reading recorded for mihād (a cradle) at al-Nabaʾ 78/6: there the earth was read as "a place not stayed in"; here the same thing is said with the word matāʿ.

I record this as an observation; the word's distribution in the Qurʾān is, however, a datum that can be verified.

لَّكُمْ — "for you". This expression was treated at al-Baqara 2/29. What was recorded there was this: it can be read in two ways — as a right of use and as a trust; and the Qurʾān has set the two side by side, because immediately afterwards the human being is called a "successor".

The same note holds here.

وَلِأَنْعَٰمِكُمْ — "and for your cattle".

This addition is worth recording. The table does not end with the human being; the animals are counted too.

أَنْعَام — Root: ن-ع-م. And the root is the root of the word niʿma (favour). Anʿām is used of the domestic animals (camel, cattle, sheep, goat) — that is, the animals a person lives from.

That the word is from the same root as niʿma is the language's own note: these animals have been named a favour.

And the distinction recorded at al-Nabaʾ 78/15 is confirmed here. There it was written that the distinction between ḥabb (grain — what the human being eats) and nabāt (plants — what the animal eats) was not certain, but that a later part of the sūra might support it.

Al-Nāziʿāt 79/33 makes this distinction explicitly: "for you and for your cattle."

And now a textual observation.

From the fifteenth verse to the forty-sixth all the verse-endings close with the sound -ā: Mūsā, ṭuwā, ṭaghā, tazakkā, takhshā, al-kubrā, ʿaṣā, yasʿā, nādā, al-aʿlā, al-ūlā, yakhshā, banāhā, sawwāhā, ḍuḥāhā, daḥāhā, marʿāhā, arsāhā…

And one single verse stands outside this order: the thirty-third.

مَتَٰعًا لَّكُمْ وَلِأَنْعَٰمِكُمْ — …li-anʿāmikum.

In an unbroken sequence of sound running thirty-two verses, this is the only break.

I record this as a textual observation and it is a datum that can be verified.

And I add a reading, stating that it is mine: the verse that breaks is the verse that states the ground of the table. Through eight verbs the works done were enumerated; then a sentence comes and says "these are for you."

That sentence steps out of the sound of the series — and addresses the one spoken to directly (lakum, anʿāmikum — "you").

I must state that I am the one setting up this relation and that I do not claim the verse intends it. The sequence of sound is, however, in the text and can be counted.

Fa-idhā jāʾati'l-ṭāmmatu'l-kubrā · Yawma yatadhakkaru'l-insānu mā saʿā · Wa burrizati'l-jaḥīmu li-man yarā "When the great overwhelming comes — on that day man remembers what he strove for; and the Blaze is brought into view for whoever sees."

Root: ط-م-م. طَمَّ ٱلْمَاءُ — the water overflowed, covered everything, filled it. طَمَّ ٱلْبِئْرَ — he filled the well, closed it to the brim with earth.

The idea beneath the root: to fill up enough to cover a thing over, to overflow and blanket.

And in Arabic طَامَّة is used idiomatically in the sense of "a calamity that cannot be overcome".

The word was already recorded in the table of the names of the Hour in the section on al-Qāriʿa and the aspect it brings forward was written there as: comprehensiveness. That table is not repeated here; it is relied on.

And the grammatical feature recorded there holds here too: nearly all the names of the Hour are on the active participle pattern and are feminine. So is al-Ṭāmma.

There are three words of this pattern in this sūra: al-rājifa (6), al-rādifa (7), al-ṭāmma (34).

And here there is a striking repetition.

The same adjective, with two different nouns.

And what the two verses set up is this: to Pharaoh the greatest sign was shown and he denied it; now the greatest calamity is coming.

I record this as my own reading. The repetition of the word is, however, a datum that can be verified.

And this must be added: al-kubrā is used in other places in the Qurʾān as well (al-Najm 53/18; Ṭāhā 20/23). That is, the word's occurring twice in this sūra is not by itself proof of intent.

تَذَكَّرَ — Root: ذ-ك-ر. To mention, to remember. The تَفَعُّل form: to try to remember, to call to mind.

And the choice of the verb is worth recording.

The verse does not say "it is shown to him", does not say "he sees". It says "he remembers".

And to remember requires having forgotten.

That is, what the verse says is this: the human being had forgotten what he did; on that day he remembers.

This differs from the other scenes treated in this commentary and is worth comparing:

Three sūras, three different verbs in the same scene.

And al-Nāziʿāt's is the most inward: the record is not outside but in the person himself. No ledger is opened; he remembers.

I record this as an observation; the verbs of the three verses are in the text.

مَا سَعَىٰ — "what he strove for".

As recorded above, this root was used of Pharaoh in the twenty-second verse: "he turned his back, hurrying."

And now the same root is used of everyone.

This is part of what the sūra has been doing from the beginning: the story of one person turns into an attribute. The same will happen with the word ṭaghā (79/17 → 79/37).

The word's sense of "running" gives a flavour here. The verse does not say "what he did"; it says "what he ran for". That is, what is remembered is the thing for whose sake one ran — the thing effort was spent on, the thing pursued.

And the comparison with al-Nabaʾ 78/40 is worth recording:

The two neighbouring sūras use two different expressions in the same structure: "mā + verb" — and both make the person's own act the object.

This parallel is a datum that can be verified.

بَرَّزَ — Root: ب-ر-ز. To come out, to become apparent, to pass from the hidden to the visible.

• بَارِز — that which is out in the open, visible. "On that day you will see the earth laid bare" (al-Kahf 18/47 — bārizatan).
• بَرَاز — open ground, a desolate plain.
• بُرُوز — coming out, appearing.

The verb is passive and of the tafʿīl form: burrizat — "it was brought into view", "it was brought before them". That is, it does not appear of itself; it is shown.

ٱلْجَحِيم — Root: ج-ح-م. The fierce burning of fire, its blazing up. Jaḥīm is one of the names the Qurʾān uses for the Fire — and the list in the section on al-Qāriʿa is not repeated here.

And the word will occur twice in this sūra: 79/36 and 79/39.

And this qualification is strange.

When the Blaze is brought into view, will not everyone see it? Why is a qualification set?

The exegetes' explanations:

And the Qurʾān describes the same scene in another sūra with a different qualification:

"And the Blaze was brought into view for those who had gone astray." (al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/91 — burrizati'l-jaḥīmu li'l-ghāwīn)

The two verses use the same verb but set a different limitation: one "for those who had gone astray", the other "for whoever sees".

This is a difference worth recording, and the two verses stand as though they complete one another: the Blaze is brought into view for those who have gone astray, and it becomes visible for whoever sees.

A reading and its note. In the twenty-sixth verse the sūra had said "a lesson for whoever feels awe"; in the forty-fifth it will say "a warner to whoever feels awe". Here too there is a qualification: "for whoever sees."

Three times the sūra says that something reaches not everyone but the one who has a particular state. I record this as an observation; the places of the three qualifications in the text can be counted.

Fa-ammā man ṭaghā · Wa āthara'l-ḥayāta'l-dunyā · Fa-inna'l-jaḥīma hiya'l-maʾwā · Wa ammā man khāfa maqāma rabbihi wa naha'l-nafsa ʿani'l-hawā · Fa-inna'l-jannata hiya'l-maʾwā

"As for him who ran beyond bounds and preferred the life of this world — the Blaze, that is the refuge. And as for him who feared the station of his Lord and restrained the self from craving — the Garden, that is the refuge."

This pattern was treated in the section on al-Qāriʿa and the finding there is not repeated.

In brief: أَمَّا is a particle of tafṣīl (setting out in detail); its answer must contain a فَ; and the feature of the pattern is this: the division is definite and leaves no gap between — there are two categories, there is no third.

The comparison with al-Qāriʿa is especially fruitful here, because there the symmetry of the pattern was broken and this was treated in detail.

What was recorded in al-Qāriʿa was this:

And there this was written: "The conditional clauses are exactly symmetrical… But the answering clauses are not symmetrical."

In al-Nāziʿāt the case is exactly the reverse:

The answers are exactly symmetrical. Only one word changes: jaḥīm / janna.

And the conditions are symmetrical too: on both sides there are two verbs.

I record this as my own reading, but the comparison can be made directly from the text:

The two sūras use the same pattern but take the measure from a different place. In al-Qāriʿa an operation is performed on the person; in al-Nāziʿāt the person's own deeds are counted.

And now let us look at the four verbs. This is the densest place in the sūra.

In each pair there is one inner and one outer movement — and the two run in opposite directions:

That is, the two groups are each other's mirror: the one overflows outward and makes a choice within; the other fears within and intervenes within.

I record this as my own reading. The meanings of the four verbs are, however, dictionary data.

And the backbone of the sūra is completed here.

The sūra turns a historical figure into a measure.

In the seventeenth verse running beyond bounds was the state of one person. In the thirty-seventh verse it becomes a category: man (whoever) — indefinite, open to everyone.

And this is one of the clearest instances in the text of the principle recorded in the method (Method): "what the verse describes are attributes; whoever bears that attribute is included in it."

The sūra does not recount Pharaoh and then say "such are the wicked". It recounts Pharaoh and gives the measure. And the measure holds for everyone whose name is not mentioned.

I record this as my own reading, but the repetition of the word and the indefiniteness of man are in the text.

One further observation: Sūrat al-Nabaʾ had used the same word too — li'l-ṭāghīna maʾābā (78/22), "for those who run beyond bounds, a place of return". But there the word came directly as an attribute; there was no narrative.

The two neighbouring sūras set up the same attribute by two roads: al-Nabaʾ names it directly, al-Nāziʿāt first shows its example and then names it.

Root: أ-ث-ر. And the concrete sense of the root is a track.

• أَثَر — a track, a footprint, a remnant. In the Qurʾān: "upon their tracks…" (al-Ṣāffāt 37/70; al-Zukhruf 43/22-23).
• ءَاثَرَ — he preferred, he put first, he chose.
• إِيثَار — to prefer another to oneself.
• مَآثِر — the traces left behind, the works.

This root was treated in the section on al-ʿĀdiyāt — there فَأَثَرْنَ بِهِۦ نَقْعًا (100/4) was taken up and the root's sense of "raising dust" was recorded within that sūra's agricultural weave.

The connection between "track" and "preference". The explanation the lexicographers give: to prefer a thing is to follow its track; or the thing preferred is put in front, and its track becomes visible.

And a derivative of the word is mentioned in the Qurʾān with praise:

"They prefer them to themselves, even though they are themselves in need." (al-Ḥashr 59/9 — wa yuʾthirūna ʿalā anfusihim)

Here there is something worth recording.

The same verb is a virtue at al-Ḥashr 59/9 and a fault at al-Nāziʿāt 79/38.

The difference is in the object: in al-Ḥashr another is preferred to oneself; in al-Nāziʿāt this world is preferred to the hereafter.

That is, the verb is not in itself good or bad. Preferring is a structural business of the human being; the question is what is preferred to what.

I record this as an observation about the language. And I add this, as my own reading: this is a repetition of a pattern recorded several times in this commentary — the same thing was said in the discussion of al-Ṣamad in al-Ikhlāṣ, of hāwiya in al-Qāriʿa, and of ittikhādh in al-Nabaʾ: the human being chooses in any case; the question is what he chooses.

The Qurʾān describes this preference elsewhere with the same verb:

"But you prefer the life of this world; whereas the hereafter is better and more lasting." (al-Aʿlā 87/16-17)

This verse is almost identical with al-Nāziʿāt 79/38 and adds a ground as well: better and more lasting.

ٱلدُّنْيَا — Root: د-ن-و. This root was treated at al-Baqara 2/61 and the finding there will be relied on.

What was recorded there was this: the root carries together the senses of being near and being low; dunyā comes from the same root and "the name of this life is 'the nearer one'"; and "the language itself delivers a verdict: what is near and what is low are named with the same word."

And this was written there: "What can be grasped by hand, reached at once, tasted now, is for that very reason the lower in worth. The name the Qurʾān chooses for 'this world' already carries this assessment within it."

What is to be added here is this: the word is an elative.

دُنْيَا is the feminine of أَدْنَىٰ — that is, an elative (a comparative/superlative): "the nearer", "the nearest".

And this requires a comparison. To say "nearer" requires the existence of something "further".

The Qurʾān names that further one: ٱلْـَٔاخِرَة — "the later, the one at the end".

That is, both lives have been named with relative words:

Neither of them carries a name of its own; they are named relative to one another.

I record this as an observation about the language.

And I add a conclusion, as my own reading: this naming makes it impossible, at the level of the language itself, to think of the two lives independently of one another. To say "this world" is already to presuppose a "hereafter" — because the expression "the nearer" is meaningless on its own.

And the fault in the thirty-eighth verse is exactly this: the person prefers "the nearer one" — that is, he makes a comparison and counts nearness as superiority.

خَافَ — Root: خ-و-ف. To fear.

And a word-choice here is worth recording. In verses nineteen, twenty-six and forty-five the sūra was using the root خَشْيَة. Here خَوْف is used.

The distinction recorded above should be recalled: the lexicographers count khawf general fear and khashya fear grounded in knowledge.

That the two words are found together in this sūra deserves to be recorded as an observation, but I do not claim that the difference between them is being deliberately used here — because the distinction is not a rule the lexicographers apply rigidly everywhere.

مَقَام — Root: ق-و-م. To stand. مَقَام — the place of standing, the position of standing, a station. And as a mīmic verbal noun: standing.

There are three views on the meaning of the construction:

The first and second views do not exclude one another and both arrive at the same thing: the person's knowing that he is under a watching and a reckoning.

The Qurʾān uses the same construction in one other place:

"For him who fears the station of his Lord there are two gardens." (al-Raḥmān 55/46)

The two verses carry exactly the same expression and both give the same result: the Garden.

The most quoted sentence of the sūra.

نَهَىٰ — Root: ن-ه-ي. To forbid, to hold back, to set an end.

And the idea beneath the root is worth recording: نِهَايَة — an end, a finish. مُنْتَهَىٰ — the final point that is reached.

That is, nahy is to set a final limit to something. To forbid is to say "this far".

And this connects with the forty-fourth verse of the sūra:

"Its final end belongs to your Lord." (79/44 — ilā rabbika مُنتَهَىٰهَا)

The same root, two distinct limits. One the limit a person sets for himself; the other the limit no one knows.

This is a repetition of a root that can be verified. The meaning the link sets up is my own reading.

ٱلنَّفْس — the self. This word was treated in detail in the section on Sūrat al-Shams and the findings there are not repeated.

But a grammatical point should be recorded: the verse does not say "his self", it says "the self" — ٱلنَّفْسَ, with the definite article, without annexation.

This choice is explained in two ways:

The first is the more widespread. The second is meaningful too and adds something: what is forbidden is not a fault peculiar to the person; it is the general tendency of the self.

ٱلْهَوَىٰ — craving.

Root: ه-و-ي. And this root was treated in detail in the section on al-Qāriʿa. The finding there will not be repeated here, but it needs recalling, because it carries the whole weight of this verse.

What was recorded in al-Qāriʿa was this: هَوَىٰ — to fall from a height; هَاوِيَة — the place fallen into, one of the names of the Fire; and:

"In Arabic 'desire' and 'to fall' are from the same root. What the lexicographers say about this connection is: hawā is what pulls a person downward; the word itself contains the fall. That is: whoever follows his craving arrives at hāwiya."

Now let us apply this to the present verse.

"He restrained the self from craving" — that is, he restrained the self from the fall. The word itself states the direction of the thing that must be restrained.

And the comparison of the two sūras is fruitful here:

Al-Qāriʿa uses the root as a point of arrival; al-Nāziʿāt as a point of departure. The two sūras take hold of the two ends of the same root.

This is a shared root that can be verified. The connection had already been set up in the section on al-Qāriʿa; here it is completed.

Craving in the Qurʾān. The word is almost always in a negative context in the Qurʾān:

"Have you seen him who takes his craving as his god?" (al-Jāthiya 45/23; al-Furqān 25/43)

"Do not follow craving, or it will lead you astray from the way of God." (Ṣād 38/26)

"They follow only conjecture and what their selves crave." (al-Najm 53/23)

ٱلْمَأْوَىٰ — Root: أ-و-ي. To take shelter, to take refuge. مَأْوَىٰ — the place taken refuge in, a refuge.

In the Qurʾān this verb occurs in scenes of taking shelter: "when they took refuge in the cave" (al-Kahf 18/10, 16); "I shall take refuge on a mountain that will protect me" (Hūd 11/43 — Noah's son).

And that the word comes with the definite article in both verses is worth recording.

The verse does not say "the Blaze is his refuge"; it says "the Blaze, that is the refuge" — hiya'l-maʾwā.

The meeting of two definite elements announces restriction in Arabic — this was recorded for Allāhu'l-Ṣamad in the section on al-Ikhlāṣ.

That is, the meaning is: there is no other refuge. That is the refuge.

And this connects with the section on al-Qāriʿa. There, in treating the expression "his mother is Hāwiya", this was recorded:

"To say 'his mother is Hāwiya' is to say 'that is the place he can go back to'. The person is not merely thrown somewhere; he arrives at the place he belongs to."

Al-Nāziʿāt sets up the same idea on both sides at once: both the Blaze and the Garden are al-maʾwā. In al-Qāriʿa it had been used for one side only.

And it connects with al-Nabaʾ as well. There the word مَـَٔاب (a place of return) was used twice, for two different addresses (78/22 and 78/39).

Three sūras, three words, the same idea:

All three say the same thing: a person arrives somewhere, and the place he arrives at is the place he belongs to.

I record this table as my own reading; the root senses of the three words are, however, dictionary data.

Yasʾalūnaka ʿani'l-sāʿati ayyāna mursāhā · Fīma anta min dhikrāhā · Ilā rabbika muntahāhā "They ask you about the Hour: 'When will it cast anchor?' Where are you in the mention of it? Its final end belongs to your Lord."

And now we come to the clearest link between the two neighbouring sūras.

The same root, in two sūras, in two different forms.

Al-Nabaʾ opened with "they ask one another"; al-Nāziʿāt closes with "they ask you".

And the answers the two sūras give are different too:

• al-Nabaʾ: it cuts the question off (kallā) and sets up a table. No answer is given, but a scene is given.
• al-Nāziʿāt: it says "you cannot know". No answer is given, and it is said that none can be given.

I record this parallel as my own reading. But the shared root, the difference of form and the positions in the two sūras are data that can be verified.

And this must be added: the two questions are not the same question. What is asked in al-Nabaʾ is "what?"; what is asked in al-Nāziʿāt is "when?"

The first is about the content of the tiding; the second about its time. And the Qurʾān answers the two in two different ways: the content is described, the time is not disclosed.

In Arabic there are two particles for a question of time: مَتَىٰ and أَيَّانَ.

The difference the lexicographers record: matā is the general question of time; ayyāna is used when the time of a great, fearful or distant event is being asked about.

And the distribution in the Qurʾān supports this distinction. Everywhere ayyāna occurs in the Qurʾān it is about the Hour or the resurrection:

"They ask you about the Hour: when will it cast anchor?" (al-Aʿrāf 7/187 — almost exactly the same as the verse in this sūra)

"When is the Day of Judgement?" (al-Dhāriyāt 51/12 — ayyāna yawmu'l-dīn)

"They have no awareness of when they will be raised." (al-Naḥl 16/21; al-Naml 27/65 — ayyāna yubʿathūn)

I draw attention to this distribution; since I cannot say with certainty whether there is an exception, I do not offer it as a rule. But if the distribution is correct, then the particle itself announces the kind of thing being asked about.

Root: ر-س-و. And as recorded above at the thirty-second verse, the same root was used of the mountains: أَرْسَىٰهَا.

مُرْسَىٰ may be a mīmic verbal noun or a noun of time/place:

Since the question is "when", the reading as a noun of time best suits the context.

And the nautical sense of the word sets up an image here.

As recorded above, irsāʾ is a ship's casting of anchor. And the Qurʾān had used this word of Noah's ark: "Its sailing and its anchoring (مُرْسَىٰهَا) are in the name of God" (Hūd 11/41).

That is, the question resembles this: "When will this ship enter harbour?"

And the answer that comes two verses later is the same as the answer of Hūd 11/41: its coming to rest is God's affair.

I record this as an observation; the shared word is, however, a datum that can be verified.

And here there is a link of sound with Sūrat al-Nabaʾ.

فِيمَ — فِي + مَا, with the alif of mā dropped.

This is the same grammatical event as عَمَّ at al-Nabaʾ 78/1. There the rule was given in the form of a table and is not repeated: interrogative mā, when it takes a preposition before it, loses its alif.

The two neighbouring sūras use the shortened interrogative at the two ends:

This is a datum that can be verified. I do not claim that the two sūras' use of this pattern at the two ends is deliberate; what I record is that two neighbouring sūras carry the same rare pattern.

The sentence is obscure in Arabic too, and the exegetes have differed.

The first and third views are close to one another and are the most widespread. Both arrive at the same result: the Prophet does not know the time of the Hour.

The fourth view does not fit the wording of the sentence and I record it as a transmitted report; I do not prefer it.

I prefer the line of the first and third views; it is not binding. My ground: the next verse gives the sense of the sentence explicitly.

This verse does not stand alone. The Qurʾān says in several places and explicitly that the time of the Hour is not known:

"They ask you about the Hour: when will it cast anchor? Say: knowledge of it is only with my Lord; none but He will disclose it at its time… Say: knowledge of it is only with God; but most people do not know." (al-Aʿrāf 7/187)

"People ask you about the Hour. Say: knowledge of it is only with God." (al-Aḥzāb 33/63)

"The knowledge of the Hour is with Him." (Luqmān 31/34; al-Zukhruf 43/85; Fuṣṣilat 41/47)

This is a consistency worth recording. The Qurʾān writes into the text something its own prophet does not know.

And this has a consequence that looks directly at the present: claims to compute the date of the Hour conflict with the Qurʾān's own text. In this commentary, per the method (Method), claims of the numerical and alphabetical-computation sort are not used; this verse is one of the supports in the text for that rule.

And the answer is given.

مُنتَهَىٰ — Root: ن-ه-ي. As recorded above at the fortieth verse, this root carries both the sense of "to forbid" and the sense of "end". Muntahā — the final point that is reached.

The Qurʾān uses this word in several places:

"And that the final end is to your Lord." (al-Najm 53/42 — wa anna ilā rabbika'l-muntahā)

"By the lote-tree of the utmost boundary." (al-Najm 53/14)

The word order of the sentence is worth recording. "Ilā rabbika" (to your Lord) has been brought forward; muntahāhā (its final end) has been left to the end.

In Arabic an element brought forward from its normal place announces restriction. That is, the meaning is: its final end belongs to your Lord alone — to no one else.

And "end" has two senses, and both may hold here:

The exegetes record both and they do not exclude one another.

Innamā anta mundhiru man yakhshāhā · Ka-annahum yawma yarawnahā lam yalbathū illā ʿashiyyatan aw ḍuḥāhā "You are only a warner to whoever feels awe of it. On the day they see it, it will be as though they had tarried only an evening, or its forenoon."

إِنَّمَا — a particle of restriction: "only, nothing but."

And the particle sets a limitation. The forty-third verse had said what the Prophet does not know; this verse says what he does.

That is, the two verses form a pair: one describes what falls outside the task, the other the task itself.

مُنذِر — Root: ن-ذ-ر. A warner. This root was treated at al-Baqara 2/6; the finding there is not repeated: إِنْذَار is to give notice of a danger to come; a warning does not remove the danger, it makes it visible.

And the same root occurred in the last verse of Sūrat al-Nabaʾ: "We have warned you of a punishment near at hand" (78/40 — andharnākum).

The two neighbouring sūras use the same root in their closing verses. This is a datum that can be verified.

And here a question arises: is the warning only to the one who feels awe?

The Qurʾān elsewhere keeps the scope of the warning wide:

"…that you may warn a heedless people." (Yāsīn 36/6)

"It is a warner to mankind." (al-Muddaththir 74/36)

"…that he may be a warner to all the worlds." (al-Furqān 25/1)

The exegetes' solution:

The first explanation is the most widespread and removes the conflict with the other verses.

And the link within the sūra. As recorded above, the root خ-ش-ي occurs three times in this sūra (19, 26, 45). And in all three it sets a qualification:

• 19: what is offered to Pharaoh as a result is awe.
• 26: the lesson is for whoever feels awe.
• 45: the warning reaches whoever feels awe.

Three times the sūra states the condition of its own working.

I record this as an observation.

And note the pronoun: يَخْشَىٰهَا — "whoever feels awe of it". The pronoun refers back to the Hour.

That is, the object of the awe here is not God but the Hour. This is a little different from the word's widespread use in the Qurʾān (awe of God) and is explained by the context: the last part of the sūra is about the Hour.

كَأَنَّ — a particle of comparison: "as though".

And what the sentence sets up is an illusion of time.

When they see the Hour, they will feel that the period they spent in the world was very short.

The Qurʾān repeats this idea in many places and the measures vary:

"How long did you tarry on the earth, in number of years? They will say: 'We tarried a day or part of a day.'" (al-Muʾminūn 23/112-113)

"On the day He gathers them, it will be as though they had tarried only an hour of the day." (Yūnus 10/45)

"The guilty will swear that they tarried no more than an hour." (al-Rūm 30/55)

"On the day they see it, they will have tarried only an evening or a forenoon." (al-Nāziʿāt 79/46)

What is common is this: the measure is always a part of a day. Not a year, not a month, not a day — a part of a day.

Root: ل-ب-ث. To stay, to remain, to linger.

And this root had occurred in Sūrat al-Nabaʾ:

"They will tarry there for ages." (78/23 — lābithīna fīhā aḥqābā)

This link was already recorded in the section on al-Nabaʾ and the table was given. It is not repeated here; in summary:

The two neighbouring sūras use the same root in exactly opposite directions.

And what the link sets up is this: the proportion of the two durations is reversed. A lifetime looks long while it is being lived; looked at from there it is half a day. Punishment looks abstract when looked at from a distance; there it is ages.

عَشِيَّة — Root: ع-ش-و. The evening, the last part of the day. عِشَاء — the time of the night prayer.

ضُحَىٰ — the forenoon; treated in the section on Sūrat al-Ḍuḥā.

And there is a grammatical point here which is needed in order to understand the expression.

ضُحَىٰهَا — "its forenoon". What does the pronoun refer to?

To عَشِيَّة. That is, the expression is: "an evening, or the forenoon of that evening."

This may look odd — what is the forenoon of an evening?

In Arabic the day is counted from evening to evening (unlike the ordinary English reckoning, in which the day runs from midnight). That is, a "day" begins with an evening and lasts until the following evening. The forenoon of that day is the forenoon of the morning that comes after that evening.

That is, the expression says this: one of the two halves of a day.

Some of the exegetes explain it thus; some read the expression generally as "either an evening or a morning — that is, a very short time."

Both readings arrive at the same result: less than half a day.

And in this commentary this verse was already mentioned in the section on al-Ḍuḥā. What was recorded there was: "The shortness of a lifetime is measured by the two ends of a day."

And this word occurs in the sūra for the second time. In the twenty-ninth verse: "He darkened [the heaven's] night and brought forth its forenoon" — وَأَخْرَجَ ضُحَىٰهَا.

The same word, at the two ends.

In the first the forenoon is a thing brought forth — the object of an act of creation. In the second the forenoon is a unit of measure — and what it measures is a lifetime.

I record this as my own reading. The repetition of the word is, however, a datum that can be verified.

And the sūra closes with the verse-ending sound it has carried through thirty-two verses: -āhā.

The sūra divides into two great halves, and the two halves mirror one another:

Both halves close with the same word: يَخْشَىٰ.

I record this symmetry as my own reading. But that the two closing verses carry the same root is a datum that can be verified.

Let us see together what was recorded separately above:

And what is in between? The course of Pharaoh's running beyond bounds: the offer, the miracle, the refusal, the turning of the back, the gathering of the crowd, the claim, the punishment.

That is, the sūra does this: it shows step by step on a single example how an attribute works, then detaches the attribute from the example and sets it out.

And in the thirty-seventh verse the example is not mentioned. It does not say "those who are like Pharaoh"; it says "whoever runs beyond bounds". The example turns into a measure that goes beyond itself.

This is one of the clearest instances in the text of the principle recorded in the method (Method) and it has a practical consequence: the sūra recounts a person but does not teach the passing of judgement on a person. It gives the measure.

The sūra divides into three regions of sound:

And in the third region there is a single break: verse 33 (li-anʿāmikum).

The changes of sound coincide with the changes of content:

• 1-5: the series of oaths.
• 6-14: the scene of the Hour and the objection.
• 15-46: the narrative, the table, the verdict and the close.

This is the form in this sūra of the fact recorded in the section on al-Nabaʾ and earlier in the sections on al-Takāthur and al-Qāriʿa: in the short Meccan sūras sound and content frequently move together.

I do not offer this as a claim of miracle; I record it as an instance of the sūra's weave of sound.

There are eight places in the sūra where the same root is used in two different places in two different functions:

All the shared roots in this table are linguistic data that can be verified. What is interpretation is the claim that they form an order — and I offer that claim as an observation, not as a ruling.

In the arrangement of the codex sūras 78 and 79 come one after the other, and both treat the same matter: the resurrection.

First a note: this is an observation about the arrangement of the codex, not about the order of revelation. The relation of sūras to one another (tanāsub al-suwar) is a recognised subject in exegesis, but some of the scholars have preferred to be cautious about the straining of such links. In this commentary the same note was set down for the trio al-Zalzala–al-ʿĀdiyāt–al-Qāriʿa and for the trio al-Takāthur–al-ʿAṣr–al-Humaza.

There are verifiable verbal links between the two sūras:

Two of the last rows deserve to be recorded separately:

One — sleep. Al-Nabaʾ counts sleep as a favour (subāt = a cutting-off); al-Nāziʿāt names the plain of resurrection al-sāhira (the sleepless one). In this world there is sleep; there there is none.

Two — the duration of stay. Al-Nabaʾ speaks of tarrying for ages in the Fire; al-Nāziʿāt of having tarried less than half a day in this world. Two durations, at the ends of two sūras, each the reverse of the other.

The tables of creation in the two sūras do the same work but are built differently:

The most striking difference is in the order: al-Nabaʾ starts from the earth and rises to the heaven; al-Nāziʿāt starts from the heaven and descends to the earth.

And this agrees with the difference between the arguments of the two sūras:

• Al-Nabaʾ begins from what is under the feet of the one addressed. It builds its argument from the near towards the far.
• Al-Nāziʿāt puts a direct comparison to the one addressed: "are you harder to create, or the heaven?" It builds its argument from the great to the small.

I record this as my own reading; the orders of the two tables are, however, in the text.

Al-Nabaʾ: "…and the denier will say, 'Would that I were dust!'"

Al-Nāziʿāt: "On the day they see it, it will be as though they had tarried only an evening, or its forenoon."

Both closings look to the past — but the one in order to erase it, the other in order to measure it.

I record this as an observation.

The first two verses of the sūra — nāziʿāt and nāshiṭāt — give a principle, and this principle works throughout the sūra.

The same operation takes two different forms according to whom it is done to.

Both verbs separate a thing from the place it is in. One tears it loose, the other unties it. The result is the same; the experience differs.

The side of this that looks to the present is: what is met with and how it is met are separate things. A loss, a separation, the coming of an end — these are the same for everyone. How they come differs.

And the sūra says where the difference comes from in verses thirty-seven to forty-one: from what the person has done.

The word at the centre of the sūra — ṭughyān — was described in the section on al-ʿAlaq: to pass one's own limit.

And the sūra shows how this attribute works on a single example. Look at Pharaoh's course:

The most notable step is the second: turning one's back and running.

Running beyond bounds is described here not as a stance but as a movement. The person does not stand where he is and refuse; he turns and goes, and runs.

And the third step is important too: gathering a crowd. The claim is not proclaimed alone; a community is first assembled.

The side of this that looks to the present is as follows, and I record it as my own reading: what is needed for a claim to be accepted is not the truth of the claim but the assembling of a crowd that will confirm it. Pharaoh does not bring evidence; he gathers a community and proclaims it there.

The Qurʾān records this separately: "He made light of his people, and they obeyed him" (al-Zukhruf 43/54 — this verse was also mentioned in the section on al-Qāriʿa).

The pattern in the eighteenth verse — هَل لَّكَ ("would you care?") — is the most easily passed over place in the sūra.

The first sentence of the man sent to the most extreme instance of running beyond bounds is an offer. Not a command, not a threat, not a proclamation.

And in Ṭāhā 20/44 this is explicitly commanded: "Speak to him a gentle word."

The side of this that looks to the present is a question of method: however hard the position of the other side, the first move can be made as an offer. And knowing the outcome of the offer does not make the offer unnecessary — the sūra knows that Pharaoh will refuse and records the offer all the same.

The ordering in the nineteenth verse is worth recording: guiding → knowing → awe.

The verse does not say "fear and then believe"; it says "let me guide you to your Lord, so that you may feel awe". Awe is the result.

And Fāṭir 35/28 confirms this: "Of His servants, only the learned feel awe of God."

The practical consequence is this: a language that tries to produce fear puts itself in the place of the thing it describes. The sūra's method is the reverse: it makes known, and leaves the fear to be the result of knowing.

A rule recorded in this commentary's method (Method) agrees with this too: "No ornate, preaching, emotionally exploitative language."

The verb in the thirty-fifth verse — يَتَذَكَّرُ (he remembers) — is this sūra's finest diagnosis.

The verse does not say that a ledger will be shown to the human being on that day. It says he will remember. And to remember requires having forgotten.