يَحْلِفُونَ بِٱللَّهِ لَكُمْ لِيُرْضُوكُمْ وَٱللَّهُ وَرَسُولُهُۥٓ أَحَقُّ أَن يُرْضُوهُ
Yaḥlifūna bi'llāhi lakum li-yurḍūkum wa'llāhu wa rasūluhū aḥaqqu an yurḍūhu in kānū muʾminīn · A-lam yaʿlamū annahū man yuḥādidi'llāha wa rasūlahū fa-anna lahū nāra jahannama khālidan fīhā; dhālika'l-khizyu'l-ʿaẓīm
"They swear to you by God in order to please you; but if they are believers, it is God and His Messenger whom they ought rather to please. · Did they not know that whoever draws a line against God and His Messenger has the fire of Gehenna, abiding in it? That is the great disgrace."
There are two subjects in the sentence — wa'llāhu wa rasūluhū — but the pronoun is singular: yurḍūhu.
| Explanation | Ground |
|---|---|
| A | That the pleasing of the two is a single thing; that it admits of no separation |
| B | The Arabic usage of mentioning one of two things and attaching the other to it (ellipsis, ḥadhf) |
| C | That the pronoun refers to the last mentioned (the Messenger) |
The concrete sense of the root: a boundary, an edge; and iron (ḥadīd). Ḥadd — the line where one thing ends and another begins.
Form III muḥādda: to draw a boundary on the opposite side, to take one's place in the opposing rank.
I record this as an observation about the language: the word relates opposition by a geographical image — crossing to the other side and marking out the line between. And in al-Ḥadīd the same root was treated by way of ḥadīd (iron); the root's idea of "sharpness/decisiveness" was given there.