وَأَمَّا مَن جَآءَكَ يَسْعَىٰ وَهُوَ يَخْشَىٰ فَأَنتَ عَنْهُ تَلَهَّىٰ
Wa ammā man jāʾaka yasʿā Wa huwa yakhshā Fa-anta ʿanhu talahhā "As for the one who came to you running — and he is in khashya — you turn from him and busy yourself elsewhere."
1. جَآءَكَ — he came. No one brought him; he came himself. 2. يَسْعَىٰ — running. Not walking. 3. يَخْشَىٰ — feeling khashya. His inner state.
So the sūra introduces the man not as someone to be pitied but as someone in motion. His blindness was mentioned only in the first verse, as the reason for his being neglected; here it does not occur even once. The man is no longer "the blind man"; he is the one who comes, who runs, who fears.
This is the most elegant thing the verse does. The answer to defining a person by his defect is to define him by his acts.
Root: س-ع-ي. To walk fast, to run; and from there: to strive, to exert oneself, to labour at a task. Saʿy — effort; the saʿy between Ṣafā and Marwa is this same word.
The verb stands as a circumstantial qualifier (it states how the act of jāʾaka took place): "he came in a state of running".
And this picture must not be missed: the man who sees is standing still, the man who does not see is running. For someone who cannot see, running means taking a risk on ground he does not know. Running is many times harder for a blind man than for a sighted one, and it is by itself a declaration of wanting.
The verse does not say this; I see it, and I record this as my own reading. But the choice of the word sets up the picture.
Root: خ-ش-ي. The difference between khashya and khawf was treated in a table at al-Bayyina 98/8; I do not repeat it here. In summary: khawf comes from the harm itself, khashya from knowing the greatness of what is feared. Fāṭir 35/28 binds khashya to knowledge openly: "Among His servants it is only those who know who feel khashya of God."
The consequence of this here is heavy. Sūrat al-Bayyina, after its description of the garden, said this at the very end: "That is for the one who feels khashya of his Lord." That is, the highest recompense was bound to precisely this attribute.
Nothing further need be said to show how far the ranking in the gathering is turned upside down. By the Qurʾān's own measure the weightiest person in the room was the man standing at the door.
The structure of the sentence carries this too. Wa huwa yakhshā is a circumstantial clause (ḥāl); it is built as a nominal sentence (huwa + verb). In Arabic the nominal sentence denotes fixity and continuity. That is, not "he feared at that moment"; khashya is his state.
Root: ل-ه-و. This root was treated in detail at al-Takāthur 102/1 (alhākumu't-takāthur); I do not repeat it here. In summary: lahw is something other than what the English word "amusement" carries — an occupation that holds a person back from his real business, that takes his attention from there and fastens it elsewhere. At the centre of the word lies not cheerfulness but displacement.
| al-Takāthur 102/1 | ʿAbasa 80/10 | |
|---|---|---|
| The verb | أَلْهَىٰ (alhā) | تَلَهَّىٰ (talahhā) |
| Form | Form IV — transitive | Form V — reflexive |
| Its meaning | "It distracted" — something distracted you | "He busied himself" — you distracted yourself |
| The human being's position | Passive: the one distracted | Active: the one who takes the distraction upon himself |
In al-Takāthur the human being was the victim of something: the race for more had distracted him. Here there is no such excuse. Form V denotes the subject's taking the act upon himself — the person is distracting himself.
And one more thing: one of the functions of Form V is takalluf, that is, doing a thing with effort. On this reading the verse grows heavier still: being distracted is here not something that happens of itself but something that is kept up.
The sūra sets these two verbs — تَصَدَّىٰ and تَلَهَّىٰ — side by side in the same form, the same pattern, the same rhyme. Both are Form V, both end with the sound -addā / -ahhā. The ear hears them as two directions of the same movement. And that is exactly what they are: to turn in one direction is to turn from the other.
These six verses are a description of how people rank one another, and the description has not grown old.
One. The ranking is done in secret. Nobody says "I find you unimportant". The ranking is done by the distribution of attention: how many minutes are given to whom, how long it takes for whose message to be answered, whose sentence can be cut short. What the sūra criticises is not a sentence but an expression on a face and a turning. The measure is that fine.
Two. The ground of the ranking is always reasonable. "My time is limited, I must put it where it will bring the most benefit." This sentence is true, and it is uttered every day. The verse breaks not the sentence but the sentence's hidden assumption: you do not know who will bring what.
Three. Attention flows towards the one who does not appear needy. Istighnāʾ gains its owner attraction. And the reverse is true too: the person who states his need openly is devalued for precisely that reason. The one who knocks at the door is taken less seriously than the one who does not. The sūra has given this perversity its name.
Four. Taking ownership of the outcome leads to sifting. This is the vein the seventh verse cuts. Whoever writes the outcome of a work to his own account is compelled to separate people according to their contribution to it. To know the limit of responsibility is not a comfort but a condition of justice.