البقرة · الآية 168

Commentary

The call here uses three instruments laid one upon another: yā, the particle of calling, for what is far in the wording and brought near by the rousing; then ayy, a vague noun made definite by what follows it; then hā, a particle of rousing that pulls the listener into hearing. It was not enough to say "O people", because the standing here asks for a rising order of attention: yā draws the hearing, ayy opens what is unfixed so that it may be fixed, hā points to the side that is meant. And choosing "people" in place of "those who trust" or "children of Ādam" or "the people of the Book" is intended: the scene before it, the equals and the disowning and the second turn and the fire, was a cosmic uncovering for everyone who took an equal, and addressing "people" here runs out along the same circle: every human being falls inside the address, not one faction only. And passing from the scene of the punishment to a command about eating carries mercy: the warning before it has closed, and the command that keeps life standing begins.

The command arrived in the verb "eat", an imperative with nothing tied to it, and a command coming after a ban gives permission, while a command that begins upon the origin gives a permission of standing with no tightening. What is meant here is the second: eating is permitted by standing, and the origin in it is that it is left open. And "from" in "from what is on the earth" is partitive: not everything on the earth but some of it. This holding back keeps the permitting origin in place while rousing the listener that the fullness is not in taking everything in but in choosing. And "on the earth" is a widened adverb of place: the whole earth and not one earth in particular, a second mark of the cosmic address, for the provision lies strewn through the earth entire. And the striking thing is that the standing origin of the law is taught here inside a verse turned towards all people: the origin is permission, and the ban is the exception.

"Permitted" is a circumstantial in the accusative from the object left unsaid, and "clean" is a second circumstantial, and the two arriving one after the other give that the command about eating is bound by two conditions and not by one. The root ḥ-l-l gives the untying of a knot: to ḥalla a rope is to release it from its binding, so the permitted is what has been released, as a ruling, from the knot of the ban. As for ṭ-y-b, it gives an enclosing of the senses that settles them: the clean is what the nature comes to rest in and the sense receives. So the permitted is a description on the scale of the ruling, and the clean is a description in the trace left on the senses and on the body. There may be a permitted that is not clean, something allowed that harms the body in a particular state, and there may be a clean that is not permitted, something the palate takes gladly whose source is forbidden, and the verse gathers the two descriptions and asks for both. And the order is exact: the permitted first, because the ruling comes before the sense; then the clean, because a bare ruling with no care for the trace on the senses opens the door to excess.

The passing by the wāw from the command to the ban uncovers that eating itself is not the place where the straying happens; the straying is in the track running alongside, the one the leader astray slips in next to the permitted eating. And the verb "follow", on the iftiʿāl form of t-b-ʿ, gives the taking of trouble and the choosing: following is a deed that calls for a will, not an accidental drifting. So the ban here is not asking the listener to be on guard against a fall, it is asking him to stop willing the following at all. And "footsteps" is the plural of khuṭwa, from the root kh-ṭ-w: the span between the two feet in walking. A step is a small unit, neither a leap nor a run. So the one who leads astray does not ask for a great sin but for steps that come one behind the other, each one not worth stopping over. And the annexing, "the footsteps of the one who leads astray", says that the steps are cast to a plan and are not scattered at random. And the root sh-ṭ-n, from which the word shayṭān is drawn, gives distance and length: a rope shaṭana when it grew long and drew far off. The one who leads astray is a far rope that stretches from the familiar starting point until it reaches a chasm the walker never pictured.

"Indeed" is an instrument of emphasis heading the sentence so as to cut off any hesitation in placing the one who leads astray. And the lām arriving in "to you" hurries the setting out: before the predicate is spoken, those whom it concerns are spoken. It is the lām of assignment: he has singled you out for the enmity and not the whole world. And "enemy" is on the pattern faʿūl, one of the patterns of intensity in the language: an enemy is not one who attacks now and then but one to whom the enmity clings as a settled quality. And "plain" is an active participle from abāna, on the afʿala form, and its sense carries across to an object: one who made himself clear and uncovered himself, not one who is merely clear of himself. So the description gives that the one who leads astray never hid his enmity, he uncovered it by his own hand: from the day of the prostration to Ādam he refused in the open, and from the day of the going out he said plainly that he would make things seem fair and would lead astray. So it is no excuse for one walking in his steps to claim he did not know what was intended: the enmity has stood declared from the beginning.

So the word precedes the term, and the role precedes the identity: the permitted is not only the opposite of the forbidden but a description of what has been released from the knot of the ban; the clean is not the delicious but what the nature comes to rest in by an enclosing that does not injure; the footsteps are not great sins but small movements coming one behind the other and cast to a plan; the one who leads astray is a far rope stretched out; and the plain enemy is an enemy who made himself plain by his own hand, after whom no plea of ignorance stands. So the guarding is not in keeping clear of one huge sin but in wariness of the first small step.

The verse moves from the scene of the punishment to a command that keeps daily life standing, and the move is itself a mercy. The address is to people at large and not to one faction: "People: eat from what is on the earth, what is permitted and clean". The origin in the law is permission and the forbidding is the exception, and the partitive "from" does not oblige anyone to take in everything God has allowed, it leaves room to choose according to the need. And the two circumstantials are doubled as two conditions that complete one another: permitted, ḥ-l-l, the untying of the knot of the ruling, and clean, ṭ-y-b, the settling enclosure of the senses, since a permitted with no clean opens the door to excess, and a clean with no permitted means a source gone bad. Then comes the ban: "Do not follow the footsteps of the one who leads astray". The footsteps, kh-ṭ-w, are the plural of the step, the smallest unit of walking: the one who leads astray does not ask for a huge sin but for a single step that raises no outcry, and the steps breed after it. And the one who leads astray, sh-ṭ-n, is a rope stretching from a familiar point to a chasm the walker never pictured. And there is no room left to plead ignorance: "He is a plain enemy to you", he declared his own enmity from the day he refused the prostration.

Two Readings