al-Tawba 9:40

Illā tanṣurūhu fa-qad naṣarahu'llāhu idh akhrajahu'lladhīna kafarū thāniya'thnayni idh humā fi'l-ghāri idh yaqūlu li-ṣāḥibihī lā taḥzan inna'llāha maʿanā; fa-anzala'llāhu sakīnatahū ʿalayhi wa ayyadahū bi-junūdin lam tarawhā wa jaʿala kalimata'lladhīna kafaru'l-suflā; wa kalimatu'llāhi hiya'l-ʿulyā; wa'llāhu ʿazīzun ḥakīm

"If you do not help him — God had already helped him: when those who rejected drove him out, the second of two; when the two of them were in the cave; when he was saying to his companion, 'Do not grieve, God is with us.' Then God sent down His sakīna upon him, and supported him with armies you did not see, and made the word of those who rejected the lowest. And the word of God, that is the highest. God is mighty, wise."

ثَانِىَ ٱثْنَيْنِ — "the second of two", that is, one of two people.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is this construction: the verse reduces the number to the smallest plurality possible. And this stands in direct opposition to a passage fifteen verses earlier:

This opposition is verifiable from the text and is one of the strongest internal weaves of the sūra. I give it as my own reading: the sūra shows the same matter from both ends — numbers were not enough, fewness was no obstacle. And the line treated in al-Anfāl at 8/26 (idh antum qalīlun mustaḍʿafūn) is completed here.

The adverb of time, repeated three times, must be recorded.

The verse narrows the scene in three stages:

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the order of the three idh: the scene narrows from a city to a cave, from a cave to a single utterance. And what is said at the narrowest point is the widest sentence of all: inna'llāha maʿanā.

There are two sentences, and both must be recorded.

The root ح-ز-ن: grief; and as the concrete sense of the root the lexicographers record ḥazn as "hard, broken, rough ground". Grief, that is, is within the word a ground hard to walk on.

Lā taḥzan — "do not grieve." This expression occurs in several places in the Qurʾān, and each time it is a sentence of consolation.

Inna'llāha maʿanā — "God is with us." And the pronoun must be recorded: maʿanā — "with us", not "with me".

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the pronoun: the consolation states not the speaker's own position but the position the two of them hold in common.

And in al-Anfāl at 8/19 a block of that sūra closed with wa anna'llāha maʿa'l-muʾminīn; in verse 46 of the same sūra there is inna'llāha maʿa'l-ṣābirīn. The same structure occurred in verse 36 of this sūra as well: anna'llāha maʿa'l-muttaqīn, and it will come again in verse 123.

I record this as my own reading: in four places the being-with is tied to an attribute; in the fortieth verse it is tied to a moment. The difference is that the sentence is not a description but an utterance.

The pronoun must be recorded: ʿalayhi — singular.

In al-Fatḥ the three descents of the sakīna at 48/4, 48/18 and 48/26 were compared, and there the ones addressed were plural. Here the one addressed is singular, and this is the word's only singular use in the Qurʾān.

I record this as a datum of the text. To whom the pronoun refers has been debated in the classical commentaries:

I convey the disagreement and impose no preference. And per the method (Method): the historical and sectarian debates conducted by way of this verse are not entered into.

The measure recorded in al-Fatḥ holds here too: sakīna is the ceasing of inner agitation — not the removal of the thing to be feared. And in this verse the thing to be feared is plainly still in place: there is pursuit, there is a driving out, two people are in a cave. What is lifted is the motion that flings a person about.