يَخْرُجُ مِنۢ بَيْنِ ٱلصُّلْبِ وَٱلتَّرَآئِبِ
The most disputed verse in the sūra. And one of the verses most abused in modern religious writing. Two things must therefore be done here separately: first to set out honestly the lexical sense of the words and the classical disagreement, then to write out plainly the position taken on the modern claims.
The majority reading: the subject is the water (the māʾ of the preceding verse). The sentence then runs: "…a water such that it comes out from between the ṣulb and the tarāʾib." That is, the verse goes on qualifying the water of the preceding verse.
Another reading is transmitted as well: the subject is man. The sentence then runs: "Man comes out from between the ṣulb and the tarāʾib." This reading is a minority one and is strained linguistically — because the flow of the sentence is qualifying the water. I record it but do not dwell on it.
- صَلُبَ — it became hard, it stiffened.
- صَلَابَة (ṣalāba) — hardness, sturdiness. Turkish still uses the word, borrowed as salâbet.
- صُلْب — the hardest structure in the body: the spine, the backbone. The name comes from its hardness.
- صَلِيب (ṣalīb) — the cross. It is counted from the same root; a structure that stands hard and crosswise.
The word occurs in the Qurʾān in the context of lineage: "…and the wives of your sons who are from your own loins" (al-Nisāʾ 4/23). The aṣlāb here is the father's spine as the place lineage comes from — this is the settled usage in Arabic.
And here one must be honest: the lexicographers and the exegetes are not agreed on exactly what this word indicates. The equivalents recorded in the lexicons and the works of exegesis:
| Equivalent | Note |
|---|---|
| The bones of the upper part of the chest; where a necklace rests | The commonest equivalent. Because it occurs in descriptions of necklaces in classical Arabic poetry, this sense of the word is well documented |
| The collarbones | A narrowing of the above |
| The rib cage, the ribs | Another narrowing |
| The chest as a whole | The general use |
| The hands, the feet and the eyes | A view that is transmitted but whose linguistic support has been found weak |
The centre of gravity of the word in the lexicon is the chest region; the narrowings beyond that are at the level of interpretation.
The real dispute in the classical works of exegesis is not about the meaning of the words but about whom they belong to.
| View | How it is put | Ground | Its weak side |
|---|---|---|---|
| The man's ṣulb, the woman's tarāʾib (the majority) | The water comes from the man's spine and from the woman's chest region; the child comes of the joining of the two | That the word tarāʾib occurs in Arab usage predominantly for a woman's chest; that the verse says "from between" | The shift to two separate persons is not stated explicitly in the sentence |
| Both the man's | That the water comes out from the region between the man's back and his chest | That the sentence qualifies a single subject; that it needs no assumption of a shift | The frequency with which tarāʾib is used of a woman |
| Both belonging to the human kind | Ṣulb and tarāʾib together stand for the back and the front of the trunk; the expression "from between" indicates a region | That the expression bayna (between) states the area lying between two points | Less treated in the classical reports |
The majority of the classical exegetes hold the first view. But the second and third views have been recorded from an early period as well; these are not readings produced later.
I adopt no preference. The ground is this: the verse does not frame a description of anatomy; it states a place, and the function of that place is to say that the water comes from the centre of the body. Whichever view is taken, the argument of the verse — "you were created from such a thing, therefore you can be brought back" — stays the same.
For about a century this verse has stood at the centre of the claim that "the Qurʾān announced embryology". The theses put forward are roughly these: that the reproductive cells form in the embryo in the region of the kidneys, near the spine, and then descend; that the blood and nerve supply of the reproductive organs comes from the level of the lumbar vertebrae; and that the expression "between the ṣulb and the tarāʾib" therefore describes this embryological position.
First, the verse stands in one place and is pulled to another. The overwhelming majority of the classical exegetes understood this verse in terms of the anatomy of the adult body — the father's spine, the mother's chest. The modern reading carries the expression across to a temporary position in the embryo. This is to set aside all the readings of the verse over the first thirteen centuries and to find a new target for the word. Such an operation can be performed, but its result cannot be called "this is what the verse meant".
Second, the claim is not verifiable. Ṣulb and tarāʾib are not medical terms but everyday Arabic words for parts of the body. To equate a word with a modern anatomical structure one must first show that the word indicates that structure; here, however, the operation runs the other way: the modern information is taken first, and then room is made for it in the word.
Third, the claim weakens the verse. The strength of the verse lies in its pointing to something everyone knows: man's beginning is an insignificant fluid. This observation needs no microscope; it is equally intelligible to a Meccan of fourteen hundred years ago and to a reader today. To load the verse with information that requires expertise takes it out of the reader's hands.
Fourth — and most important of all — the argument does not need it. The flow of the sūra is this: look at what you were created from (5) → from a water (6) → coming out of such a region (7) → therefore He is able to bring you back (8). The seventh verse is the qualification of the sixth; it is not a proof but a description. What serves as proof is the plainness of the water, not the coordinates of the place it came out of.
The rule laid down in the method of this commentary (Method) is applied here exactly: no modern information is forced onto a verse; a connection is drawn only where one really exists. The connection that really exists here is this, and it is enough: man's material origin is out of all proportion to the greatness he claims. This is an observation that both that day and this one can verify.