al-Inshiqāq 84:6

Yā ayyuha'l-insānu innaka kādiḥun ilā Rabbika kadḥan fa-mulāqīh "O man! You are toiling towards your Lord, toiling hard; and you shall meet Him."

The central verse of the sūra and one of the densest sentences in the Qurʾān about man.

The verse does not say "O you who disbelieve" or "O you who believe". ٱلْإِنسَٰن — man, as a genus.

The al- here conveys istighrāq: it encompasses the whole of the genus. That is, the sentence calls not to a group but to the quality of being human. And this is set up before the distinction that will come after the eighteenth verse (the one given his book in his right hand / from behind him). First the common condition is laid down, then the parting.

The same ordering was present in Sūrat al-Qāriʿa as well: first "people" (everyone), then the scale and the two groups. This is the Qurʾān's customary movement — the diagnosis to everyone, the ruling one by one.

Root: ك-د-ح. And this word occurs only in this verse in the Qurʾān; and in that same verse twice (kādiḥun and kadḥan).

The root's primary sense in the lexicon is this: to scrape the skin with the nail or with something hard, to scratch, to graze. In Arabic a scratch on a face, an abrasion, is called kadḥ: bi-wajhihī kadḥun — "there is a graze on his face".

From this comes the second sense: to work until one wears oneself out. Kadaḥa li-ahlihī — he toiled for his family, he wore himself down. Kadḥ is not ordinary work; it is work that leaves a mark. It leaves an abrasion on the one who works.

There is one more distinction the lexicographers transmit: the difference between kadḥ and kasb (earning). Kasb looks to the result — what did you get. Kadḥ looks to the process — how much were you worn down.

What the verse does is this: it names man's life a "scraping".

For naming a life Arabic had dozens of words: saʿy (running about), ʿamal (work), jahd (effort), sayr (walking), ḥayāt. The word chosen is the one that takes something off the surface of the skin.

In this commentary the following verse was treated in the section on Sūrat al-Balad:

لَقَدْ خَلَقْنَا ٱلْإِنسَٰنَ فِى كَبَدٍ — "We have surely created man in hardship." (al-Balad 90/4)

The observation recorded there was this: at the centre of the root kabad is the idea of "the middle, the core"; hardship is not a fault at the edge but a structure standing at the centre. And because the particle fī conveys being encompassed, hardship is an element — man does not enter hardship, he begins inside it.

Now set the two verses side by side. Both are about al-insān, both are in short Meccan sūras, both make the same diagnosis. But their points of view differ:

The two verses complete one another. Al-Balad states the situation: hardship is unavoidable. Al-Inshiqāq states what happens inside that situation: unavoidable hardship turns into a wearing-down spent in a direction.

And this difference matters: at al-Balad 90/4 man is placed inside hardship; at al-Inshiqāq 84/6 man walks inside hardship. The first is diagnosis, the second movement.

Reference was already made to this verse in the section on al-Balad; here I record that the link runs both ways.

Kādiḥun (the active participle: toiling) would have sufficed. The verse adds behind it the verbal noun of the same root: كَدْحًا.

This is the structure Arabic calls the absolute object, and it does two things: it reinforces the verb ("you really are toiling") or it conveys the kind or the quantity of the verb.

Here the reinforcing function comes forward. In English it is carried by a doubling: "you are toiling and toiling", "scraping and scraping".

But there is something more. Because the word occurs twice in the verse, the sound of the root is heard twice as well: kādiḥun … kadḥā. ك-د-ح — three hard letters: kāf, dāl, ḥāʾ. Read the word aloud and a friction is heard in the throat. The sound of the word agrees with the movement it describes.

I record this as an observation, not as a claim of miracle; a similar observation was made in the section on al-Qāriʿa, and it was stated there that sound-sense agreement is a phenomenon found in all languages.

The decisive element of the verse is this particle: إِلَىٰ (ilā) — towards a goal, until that goal is reached.

The sentence does not say "you are toiling"; it says "you are toiling towards your Lord".

This has two consequences, and both are hard:

First: the toiling has a direction, and that direction has not been chosen. The verse does not say "you must toil towards your Lord"; it says "you are toiling" — in the indicative. This is not a command but a statement of fact. Whatever a man does, whatever work he busies himself with, the place he is going is the same.

Second: labour does not change direction, it changes only its content. He who piles up wealth is toiling, and so is he who gives it up. Both are going the same way. What differs is what will be in his hand when he arrives.

The Qurʾān says this plainly elsewhere: "Truly, to your Lord is the return" (al-ʿAlaq 96/8); "Every soul shall taste death; then to Us you will be returned" (al-ʿAnkabūt 29/57).

The فَ at the head conveys result: the toiling continues, and at the end there is a meeting.

مُلَاقٍ is the active participle of the root liqāʾ in the مُفَاعَلَة (mufāʿala) pattern, Form III. In Arabic this form conveys mutuality: qātala (he fought with another), kātaba (he corresponded), lāqā (he met, he came face to face).

The word does not say "you will arrive" or "you will reach", that is. It says "you will meet" — an encounter in which two parties come face to face.

There is disagreement about the pronoun هِ (hi) at the end of the verse:

The majority prefer the first view. I too prefer the first; my ground is that the fāʾ linking ilā Rabbika to fa-mulāqīhi ties the goal of the road directly to the meeting. It is not binding, and the second view is not contrary to the text either — the continuation of the sūra (the giving of the book) already describes a meeting with one's deed.

In this commentary the following verse was treated in Sūrat al-Baqara:

"They know with certainty that they shall meet their Lord (mulāqū Rabbihim) and that to Him they are returning." (al-Baqara 2/46)

The observation recorded there was this: in Arabic the root ẓann can answer to both a doubtful conjecture and a firm conviction, and in that verse firm conviction is meant.

Now note: the مُلَٰقُوا۟ رَبِّهِمْ at al-Baqara 2/46 and the مُلَٰقِيهِ at al-Inshiqāq 84/6 are the same pattern — the same root, the same form, the same active participle.

And eight verses after using this pattern, Sūrat al-Inshiqāq will use that same verb ẓann at the opposite pole:

إِنَّهُۥ ظَنَّ أَن لَّن يَحُورَ — "He supposed that he would never return." (84/14)

That is:

• al-Baqara 2/46: the believers who suppose (= know with certainty) that they will meet Him.
• al-Inshiqāq 84/14: the man who supposes (= guesses wrongly) that he will not return.

The same verb, at two extremes. And in the middle of the two stands what al-Inshiqāq 84/6 says to everyone: you shall meet Him. Whether the supposition is right or wrong does not change the event.

I record this connection as a reading I have drawn from comparing the two verses; the words they share, however, are in the text.