ثُمَّ رَدَدْنَٰهُ أَسْفَلَ سَٰفِلِينَ
- وَ (wāw) — conveys no order, it only adds.
- فَ (fāʾ) — immediately afterwards; following without a gap.
- ثُمَّ (thumma) — following with a gap; there is a distance between the two events.
The verse uses not fāʾ but thumma. It is not saying "We created, and immediately afterwards We brought him down"; there is an interval in between.
An interval of time. Man was created, a stretch of time passed, then he fell. This reading counts the "fall" as something that takes place within life.
An interval of rank (thumma'l-rutba). In Arabic thumma sometimes conveys not time but the distance between two rulings: "and what is more". On this reading the verse would be saying: We created man in the finest stature — and, astonishingly, We turned him back to the lowest of the low. The distance between them is not chronological but logical.
The second reading carries the tension between the two verses better. What is astonishing about the sūra is in any case not the order of events but that two opposite rulings can be issued about the same being.
Root: ر-د-د. Its original sense is to turn back, to give back, to send back. From the same root come radd (turning back), irtidād (turning back on one's tracks), mardūd (turned back).
The choice of the word is striking. The verse does not say "We cast him down" or "We brought him down"; it says "We turned him back".
The verb radd conveys a thing's being returned to a place or a state in which it was before. This has a direct effect on the meaning of the verse: turning back is an act of restitution. Man had been taken from somewhere; he is being sent back there.
Which "somewhere" that is stands at the very centre of the disagreement below. On the old-age reading what is returned to is the helplessness of childhood; on the earth reading, the earth he was brought out of; on the moral reading, an animal level at which the capacity is not used.
"And some of you are turned back (yuraddu ilā ardhali'l-ʿumur) to the most abject time of life, so that after having known he comes to know nothing" (al-Naḥl 16/70; almost the same expression in al-Ḥajj 22/5).
This is the closest kin within the Qurʾān of the verb radadnā in our verse, and it is the strongest support of the old-age reading. In both places the same root, the same direction: a turning back from above downwards.
Root: س-ف-ل. To be low, to sink. Its opposite is ʿuluww (height). From the same root Turkish has borrowed süflî (belonging to what is below).
- أَسْفَل — the elative: "lower / lowest"
- سَافِلِين — the plural of the active participle: "those who are low"
Word for word, then: "the lowest of those who are low." The English "the lowest of the low" carries this well.
An observation about the structure. This construct is in exactly the same form as أَحْكَمِ ٱلْحَاكِمِينَ (the most judicious of judges) in the last verse of the sūra: elative + a plural active participle from the same root. The sūra uses one and the same grammatical pattern at its two ends — one for the lowest point man can fall to, the other for God's position in issuing judgement. I record this as my own observation; it is a symmetry that stands in the text.
That the word sāfilīn is the plural proper to rational beings (the sound masculine plural) must be noted as well. In Arabic this plural form is generally used for human beings and possessors of intellect. What "the low" means, then, is not stone and earth but beings that have fallen. This is a linguistic datum that strengthens the moral reading of the verse.
| View | What it means | Ground | Weakness |
|---|---|---|---|
| Old age / the time of decrepitude | Man is created strong and upright, and at the end of his life grows weak and loses his knowledge | The verb radda being used in exactly this sense in al-Naḥl 16/70 and al-Ḥajj 22/5; the sense of restitution in the verb "to turn back" | Old age is not a fault, and the believer grows old too; in that case the exception in verse 6 loses its sense (treated below) |
| Hell | The place he is brought down to is in the hereafter; the lowest level | The Qurʾān names the Fire with the word asfal: "The hypocrites are in the lowest level of the Fire" (al-Nisāʾ 4/145) | The verb is perfect (past tense); for the hereafter a future would be expected. Besides, the context of the sūra is the life of this world |
| Moral abasement | Man, by not using the equipment given him, sinks to an animal level | The exception in verse 6 being built out of faith and deed; sāfilīn being the plural proper to possessors of intellect | The sense of "turning back" in the verb radda is weakened on this reading |
| The lower layer of creation | The earth man was brought out of / the world-bound side of the body | The sense of restitution in radd; the Qurʾān's expression "from it We created you, and to it We shall return you" (Ṭāhā 20/55) | It makes no link with the moral frame of the sūra |
The sixth verse says "except those who believe and do righteous deeds". Now the question is this: what are those excepted being left outside of?
If the fall is old age, the exception cannot be "connected" (muttaṣil) — because the believer grows old too, and he too grows weak. In that case the exception has to be counted "disconnected" (munqaṭiʿ): that is, illā here means "but, however", and the sentence is read: "…but as for those who believe and do righteous deeds, for them there is a reward unceasing." They too grow old, that is, but their old age does not cut off the return of their deeds.
There is a grammatical datum supporting this reading: in the verse a فَ (fāʾ) comes after the exception — fa-lahum ajrun. In Sūrat al-ʿAṣr there was no fāʾ after the exception. The presence of the fāʾ shows that the sentence moves close to a condition-and-answer relation, and it makes the disconnected reading of the exception easier.
If the fall is moral abasement, the exception is straightforwardly connected: the human kind is falling, these are not falling. The sentence reads more fluently, but the presence of the fāʾ is left a little in excess.
My assessment — it is not binding: both are readings the text can bear and they need not be forced to a choice. From the point of view of the sūra as a whole the moral reading is the more fruitful, because at its end the sūra is bound to the reckoning and to judgement, and old age is not a matter of reckoning. But the support the old-age reading has in the verb radda is serious and must not be taken lightly.
This too has to be added: the views do not exclude one another. Man's growing decrepit in body and his sinking morally can be read as two faces of one and the same reality — both are a moving away from "the finest stature". The word is wide enough to carry both, and the verse does not narrow it.
One point to notice: the subject of the act of bringing down is God as well. It is not said "man fell"; it is said "We turned him back". The act of creating and the act of bringing down belong to the same subject, in the same plural mode: khalaqnā… radadnāhu.
This does not mean that the verse frees man from responsibility — what follows in the sūra establishes responsibility openly. What it says is more basic: both the rise and the fall take place inside an order. Man neither built his own stature nor laid down the rules of the fall. This is the language the Qurʾān prefers in places of this kind: the acts are ascribed to God, the responsibility is laid on man. The relation between the two is one of the longest debates in the history of theology, and I take no side here.