إِنَّهُۥ عَلَىٰ رَجْعِهِۦ لَقَادِرٌ
The natural order of the sentence would have been this: innahū la-qādirun ʿalā rajʿihī — "surely He is able to bring him back."
In Arabic an element brought forward from its normal place gains ihtimām (the marking of importance) and most often takhṣīṣ (restriction). Its effect here is this: the centre of gravity of the sentence becomes not "He is able" but "able to bring back". This was exactly what was in dispute — those addressed were not denying God's power in general; they were denying that He could do this particular thing. The verse puts the emphasis where the dispute is.
We saw something like this technique at al-Ikhlāṣ 112/4: there too lahū was brought forward, and the idea of "an equal to Him" was specifically rejected.
لَ (lām). The lām at the head of la-qādir is the lām of emphasis that enters the predicate of inna. Inna + lām + a nominal sentence: three emphases one on top of another.
- رُجُوع (rujūʿ) — return.
- مَرْجِع (marjiʿ) — the place to which one returns. It lives on in Turkish as merci, "the authority one applies to".
- رَجْعَة (rajʿa) — a going back.
- ٱسْتِرْجَاع (istirjāʿ) — to say "innā li'llāhi wa innā ilayhi rājiʿūn". This sentence, spoken at a moment of calamity, carries the word itself: "we are those who return to Him."
رَجْع is here a verbal noun, and by taking a genitive complement it has become rajʿihī: "his being brought back".
إِنَّهُۥ — "He". According to the majority it refers to God. The name of God does not occur in the sūra; the pronoun has come without a stated referent. This is a known usage in the Qurʾān and was treated in the section on Sūrat al-Qadr: a pronoun whose referent is left unstated conveys taʿẓīm (magnification) and perfect notoriety — the thing is so plain that naming is not needed.
| View | Meaning | Ground |
|---|---|---|
| Man (the majority) | To bring man back to life after death | The whole flow of the sūra; that verse 9 is a scene of the hereafter; the general language of the Qurʾān on this subject |
| The water | To return the water to the place it came out of | That the subject of the preceding verse is the water |
| Man to his first state | To return man to the state of a drop again | To show the measure of the power |
The first view is by far the stronger in point of context, and verse 9 confirms it: "the day when the hidden things are tested" — this is not the concern of a drop of water.
The second and third views have been recorded but do not agree with the flow of the sūra. I make my preference on the ground of context; and it is not binding.
This verse is the shortest form of the basic argument the Qurʾān uses in defending the resurrection. The argument is this: the first making is the proof of the second.
- "Have they not seen how He began the first creation? God will do it again" (al-ʿAnkabūt 29/19-20).
- "It is He who begins creation, then repeats it; and that is easier for Him" (al-Rūm 30/27).
- "He said: who will give life to these bones when they have rotted? Say: He who created them the first time will give them life" (Yāsīn 36/78-79).
The force of this argument is logical: the proof that a thing can be done is that it has been done. The objecting party already accepts his own existence; what he accepts is the proof of what he objects to.
The clause "and that is easier for Him" in al-Rūm 30/27 must also be noted. Ease here is not a grading on God's side — for absolute power there is no hard and no easy. The expression speaks by man's own measure: to make from nothing is harder than to make again what has been made once. The proof is built out of the logic of the one addressed.
1. First the claim is made: He is able to bring man back (8). 2. Then an oath comes: by the sky that has a return (11).
The same word, first inside the claim, then in the oath sworn on the proof of the claim. This is the tightest link in the sūra, and it will be taken up in detail at verse 11.