كَلَّا لَمَّا يَقْضِ مَآ أَمَرَهُۥ
The sūra's second hinge. The first (verse 11) had passed from the incident to the text; this second one passes from man's story to the verdict.
And kallā here rejects something: the assumption that the favours counted out in the preceding six verses have met with a return. The list is finished, the reckoning has been made, the result: no.
In Arabic there are two close particles of negation, and the difference between them is decisive here:
| لَمْ (lam) | لَمَّا (lammā) | |
|---|---|---|
| Its meaning | He did not do it | He has not yet done it |
| Expectation | None; the door is closed | There is one; the thing is still expected to happen |
| Time | The whole of the past | Up to now; what comes after is open |
The term the lexicographers use for lammā is tawaqquʿ: expectation. To say lammā yaqḍi is not to say "he did not do it and is not expected to do it"; it is to say "up to now he has not done it". What comes after is open.
The meaning of this is large. The verse delivers the sūra's heaviest verdict — the return for all the favours counted out has not been given — and it delivers it with a particle that does not close the door. A single letter takes the verdict out of being final.
Read together with the imprecation of the seventeenth verse, the picture is completed: "Perish man" — an imprecation; "he has still not done it" — but the matter is not finished. The sūra both says the harshest word and leaves the word open to a return.
A grammatical note. The verb yaqḍi is in the jussive (majzūm) because of lammā, and its final letter (yāʾ) has dropped: yaqḍī → yaqḍi. In the muṣḥaf too it is written without the yāʾ.
Root: ق-ض-ي. Its meaning is wide, and all of it turns around taking a matter through to its end: to judge (qāḍī — the one who gives judgement), to complete, to carry out, to finish. Qaḍāʾ — both a judgement and the later performance of what was not done at its proper time.
The choice of the word is meaningful: not "he did not do it" (faʿala) but "he did not complete it" (qaḍā). That is, the matter is not that he never began; it is that he has not finished. Man has done some things; but he has not taken the matter through to its end.
- مَا as a relative pronoun: "the thing He commanded him". That is, the content of the command.
- مَا as maṣdariyya: "His commanding him", that is, the carrying out of the command.
In respect of meaning the difference is small. In both, what is lacking is the same: that the command given has not been taken through to its end.
What is the content of the command? The verse does not say. And its not saying keeps the scope open, as the leaving of the word māʿūn undefined does in al-Māʿūn. Judging by what the sūra has counted out up to here, the core of the content is plain: to acknowledge what has been given and to give its return.