بَلَىٰٓ إِنَّ رَبَّهُۥ كَانَ بِهِۦ بَصِيرًۢا
In Arabic there are three separate particles of affirmation, and the distinctions between them matter:
| Particle | When it is used |
|---|---|
| نَعَمْ (naʿam) | An affirmative answer to an affirmative question: "Did he come?" — "Yes." |
| بَلَىٰ (balā) | To break a negative statement or question: "Did he not come?" — "No, he did come." |
| إِى (ī) | Confirmation together with an oath |
Balā rejects a negative expression and puts the affirmative in its place. English has no exact counterpart either; it is carried by "no, on the contrary" or by an emphatic "yes, indeed".
The Qurʾān's most famous balā is at al-Aʿrāf 7/172: "Am I not your Lord?" — "Balā (yes, You are); we bear witness."
What does the balā here break? The negative sentence of the preceding verse: أَن لَّن يَحُورَ — "that he would never return". The verse takes that lan and breaks it: no, he will return.
This is an unexpected answer and worth dwelling on. The man's error was an error of knowledge (he supposed there was no return). The answer, however, is a notice of being seen.
The connection is this: because the man assumed he was not seen, he also counted the return unnecessary. The return is for the reckoning; the reckoning is for the record; the record is for the seeing. The verse touches the very beginning of the chain. If he has been seen there is a record; if there is a record there is a reckoning; if there is a reckoning there is a return.
This choice of tense is meaningful. The verse does not say "his Lord sees him", it says "was seeing". That is, the seeing was already going on during the very period in which the man was saying "I shall not return".
While the man supposed himself unseen he was being seen. The record was being kept without his being aware of it. The "book given from behind" of the eleventh verse is meaningful for this reason: the book had already been written; the man had no knowledge of it.
In Sūrat al-Balad the same idea was treated with another word: "Does he suppose that no one has seen him? Have We not given him two eyes?" (al-Balad 90/7-8). The observation recorded there — that it says not "We saw you" but "We gave you eyes" — comes here from the other side: in this sūra it is said directly, "his Lord was seeing you".
Root: ب-ص-ر. To see; and beyond that: to distinguish, to grasp. Baṣar is the eye, baṣīra insight, tabaṣṣur looking attentively.
The word is an intensive adjective on the faʿīl pattern: not merely "seeing" but one whose seeing is complete and continuous.
بِهِ — "him". It comes with a preposition: baṣīran bihī. In Arabic the construction baṣīr bi- conveys the seeing's being focused on something: about him, knowing him.
The verse does not set up a general sentence "God sees everything", that is. "His Lord was seeing him" — singular, this man, this life. The man supposed himself lost in the crowd.
This is the last move of the play of scale the sūra has been setting up from the beginning: the sky, the earth, all mankind… and at the end one person.