وَٱلسَّمَآءِ وَمَا بَنَىٰهَا
Here the character of the series changes. In the first four oaths there was only the object; now the maker enters alongside the object.
Root: b-n-y. To construct, to establish, to bring a structure into being by setting one thing upon another. From the same root come bināʾ (a building), bunyān (a firm structure), ibn (a son — the one upon whom the line is built).
This verb is used of the sky again and again in the Qurʾān: "And We built above you seven firm (shidād) heavens" (al-Nabaʾ 78/12); "And the sky We built with power" (al-Dhāriyāt 51/47).
The word was already touched on in Sūrat al-Baqara: "He who made the earth a bed for you, and the sky a building" (al-Baqara 2/22). What was said there is repeated here: in the Qurʾān the sky is not a void but a structure that has been raised. A void comes about of itself; a structure requires a builder. The choice of the word already prepares the expression that will come in the next clause: "the one who built it".
This is the most debated point of grammar in the sūra, and the debate concerns all three of verses 5, 6 and 7.
The problem is this: in Arabic مَا is generally used of things without reason, and مَنْ of those possessed of reason. Here the builder of the sky and the earth is God. Why, then, is it not wa man banāhā (and by the one who built it) but wa mā banāhā?
| View | What mā is | Rendering | Ground | Its weak side |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Maṣdariyya | It turns the verb after it into a verbal noun | "By the sky and by His building of it" | Mā need not run up against the reason/no-reason rule; there are places in the Qurʾān where an oath is sworn by an act or a work | That the eighth verse ("then He inspired it") turns to an agent suggests that the oath too is looking to an agent |
| Mawṣūla | "He who, the one who built it" | "By the sky and by the one who built it" | The flow of the sūra advances toward the maker; the agent of the verb fa-alhamahā in the eighth verse comes from here | The use of mā for one possessed of reason is out of the ordinary |
| Nakira mawṣūfa | An indefinite noun + an attribute | "By the sky and by a power that built it" | The indefiniteness conveys magnification (taʿẓīm): a force unnamed, its bounds undrawn | In point of sense it comes out at almost the same place as the second |
To the objection raised against the second view this answer is given, and the answer is a serious one: مَا, when it is used of those possessed of reason, looks not to the essence but to the attribute. It is the answer to the question not "who did it?" but "what kind of thing did it?" For this reason mā here produces not an indefiniteness but a magnification: do not set about describing what the thing that did this is. There is a comparable usage in the Qurʾān: "God created you and what you make (mā taʿmalūn)" (al-Ṣāffāt 37/96) — there too mā is disputed.
Preference. If I must state a preference — and saying that it is not binding — the second and third views sit better with the sūra's own flow. The reason is this: the continuation of the seventh verse is the eighth, and there the verb turns to an agent: "fa-alhamahā" — "then He inspired it." One who inspires is a person. If the agent were not already on the stage at the third step of the oath, the hidden subject of the eighth verse would be left hanging.
But the maṣdariyya view has a real force too, and it would not be right to present the disagreement as settled: on that reading the oath is sworn by the act — by the building, the spreading, the ordering. And that is a reading that does the sūra's work, since what is stressed throughout the sūra is precisely the work done.
This should be added as well: all three views point in the end to the same place. Say "by His building of it", or "by the one who built it", or "by a power that built it" — the sentence is saying that the sky did not come about of itself.