وَٱلسَّمَآءِ ذَاتِ ٱلرَّجْعِ
Here the sūra goes back to the beginning. The first oath too began with the sky (wa'l-samāʾi wa'l-ṭāriq). The second begins with the sky as well. But this time what comes after the sky is not the ṭāriq but the earth.
| The first (1-3) | The second (11-12) | |
|---|---|---|
| The first element | The sky | The sky |
| The second element | Al-ṭāriq — what appears in the sky | The earth — what lies opposite the sky |
| The qualification | al-najmu'l-thāqib (a separate verse) | dhāti'l-rajʿ / dhāti'l-ṣadʿ (within the same verse) |
| The scene | Night, a single point of light | Season, a widespread cycle |
| The subject of the answer | Man | The word |
The first oath is sworn by a moment, the second by a cycle. In the first something appears; in the second something is repeated.
ذَات is a word meaning "the one that has"; it is used for the feminine (samāʾ is feminine in Arabic). Dhāti'l-rajʿ — "possessor of return".
The choice of this construction is meaningful. It could have said "by the returning sky" (al-samāʾi'l-rājiʿa). It did not. A construct built with ذات is stronger than an adjective: it states the quality not as a passing condition but as a property possessed. The sky is not returning; the sky has a return.
The same construction will be repeated in the next verse (dhāti'l-ṣadʿ), so that the two oaths are bound to one another.
The root of the word was treated at verse 8. Here the question is this: what does the "return" of the sky mean?
| View | How it is put | Ground |
|---|---|---|
| Rain (the majority) | In Arabic rajʿ is one of the names of rain. Every year the sky "brings the rain back" | A use recorded in the lexicons; it occurs in old Arabic poetry. It also fits directly with the next verse (the splitting of the soil) |
| The return of the heavenly bodies | The rising and setting of stars and planets, their coming back to the same positions | Observationally the most visible cycle |
| The water cycle | The vapour that rises from the ground coming back as rain | It fits the root's sense of "to turn back" |
| The descent and ascent of the angels | A transmitted view | It has found few adherents |
The majority prefer the first view, and their ground is strong: the next verse speaks of the splitting of the soil. The relation between rain and the splitting of soil is too plain to need explaining. The two are the two halves of a single event.
Even so, the second and third views do not exclude the first. The word rajʿ means, before anything else, "a going back"; whichever return is meant, the work of the word is the same: the coming back of something that has gone.
In the eighth verse this claim was made: "He is able to bring him back." — إِنَّهُۥ عَلَىٰ رَجْعِهِ لَقَادِرٌ
In the eleventh verse this is sworn by: "By the sky that has a return." — وَٱلسَّمَآءِ ذَاتِ ٱلرَّجْعِ
This is the architectural centre of the sūra. The claim is built with a word; the proof is given with the same word. The sentence turns into this:
You say that rajʿ is impossible. The name of the thing that happens over your head every year is rajʿ as well.
The structure of the argument is the same as in verses 5-8 — what has happened in the past is the proof of what will happen in the future — but the example has changed. There the proof was personal (your own beginning); here it is cosmic and repeated (each year's rain).
And the second is stronger than the first, because it is something that repeats. No one saw his own creation; everyone sees the rain every year.
Some of the classical exegetes set up this link; I too record it, resting on the repetition of the word in the text. Because both occurrences of the word stand in the text itself, this is not a reading at the level of inference but a direct observation.