وَٱلَّذِى قَدَّرَ فَهَدَىٰ
- قَدَّرَ (with the doubling, the tafʿīl form) — He determined, He measured and cut out, He fixed its quantity.
- قَدَرَ (without the doubling, Form I) — He measured; and also "He had power over".
Both readings are transmitted with ascription to the authorities of the variant readings; since I cannot give with certainty which authority preferred which, I write no name.
The difference in meaning: The reading with the doubling brings forward the comprehensiveness of the operation and its repetition — a measure being set for each thing separately. The reading without the doubling states the measuring itself and also keeps open the sense of qudra. The difference does not change the ruling; the two readings give two faces of the same verb.
Root: ق-د-ر. This root was taken up in detail in the section on Sūrat al-Qadr. There three wings of meaning of the root were distinguished, and the first sits directly here:
Measure, quantity, determination. Qadara — he measured, he cut out, he fixed its quantity. Its derivatives: qadar (a determined measure), miqdār (quantity), taqdīr (measuring and cutting out), qudra (the power to do a thing to its measure).
And the verse mentioned there is in a key position here: "We created everything according to a measure (bi-qadar)" (al-Qamar 54/49).
In the section on al-Qadr this was also recorded: the relation between determining a measure and worth is set up in the language itself — to know the qadr of a thing is to give it its right measure.
The only point to be added here is the scope of the word in this verse: taqdīr here is not the theological debate about destiny; it is the giving to each being of its own measure. A bird's wing, the germination time of a seed, the temperature of a body, the range of an eye's vision — each of them is a taqdīr.
Root: ه-د-ي. This root was taken up in the section on al-Fātiḥa and had occurred once more at al-Ḍuḥā 93/7.
What was recorded in al-Fātiḥa: the root carries two senses and the two are akin — to show the way and to give a gift. From the same root comes hadiyya. And this had been added: "To show the way is a gift; to describe the direction to someone who cannot find his way is to give him something."
In the section on al-Ḍuḥā the concrete core of the root was stated: not merely "to point out" but to offer forward gently. From the same root comes hady (the sacrificial animal driven to the Kaʿba). Guidance is showing the way and driving towards that way; it is not describing it from a distance.
This last point is decisive for al-Aʿlā 3. The verse does not speak of a transfer of information; it speaks of a driving forward.
The real matter of the verse is that these two verbs have been bound with a fāʾ: He measured, and as a result of this He guided.
Because the way of each being is according to its own measure. The way given to a bee cannot be the same as the way given to a human being, because the capacity of the two is not the same. Guidance cannot be given without the measure of the one guided being known.
The verse that expresses this most plainly is in Sūrat Ṭāhā, and it is almost like a commentary on al-Aʿlā 3:
"Our Lord is He who gave everything its creation, and then guided" (Ṭāhā 20/50).
The same two steps, in the same order: first each thing is given its own portion, then it is guided. This is the answer Moses (Mūsā) gave to Pharaoh, and al-Aʿlā 3 has compressed the same sentence into two words.
- "Your Lord revealed to the bee: Take houses in the mountains, in the trees, and in what they build" (al-Naḥl 16/68). The bee's way is according to the bee — and the guidance given to it comes through a different channel from the one given to a human being.
- For the human being, guidance takes the form of a book; because in the human being's measure there is choice.
The scope of the verse comes out of this. The explanations given in the classical commentaries about the content of the verb hadā here:
| Explanation | Its scope |
|---|---|
| He showed each living thing how to find its livelihood, its mate, its young | Natural guidance; instinct |
| He directed each being to the work for which it was created | The scope at its widest |
| He gave the human being the capacity to tell good from evil | It comes out at the same place as fa-alhamahā fujūrahā wa taqwāhā at al-Shams 91/8 |
| He guided by prophets and books | Revelatory guidance |
These are not alternatives to one another but layers of a single verb. In the section on al-Fātiḥa the degrees of guidance had been distinguished — showing, making walk, holding firm; what is at issue here is the basic layer prior to all of them: that everything brought into being knows what it is to do.