الإسراء · الآية 99

Commentary

It does not say "have they seen". The interrogative has come in over a negative particle, so the question is about the absence of the seeing and not about its presence, and the weight falls in a different place: the one asks for a report, the other sets the absence itself up to be wondered at. Then the verb takes a whole clause rather than a perceptible object. What is to be seen in this verse is a relation stated, not a thing looked at. Seeing has its own entry in the glossary; what is to be noticed here is that what is asked of them is the grasping of a bearing between two matters, both of which are already in front of them.

The divine name is given and then qualified by a relative whose clause is a completed past act, and the predicate that follows is a participle and not a verb. Creation and ability both have their own entries in the glossary. The build of the sentence is in that order. The finished making is the ground on which the standing description rests: what has been made and is looked at carries what is said of the maker. They are not asked to accept what they have not seen; they are asked to read out of the seen what follows from it. And the participle states the description as standing rather than occurring. A finite verb would have given something renewed; the participle gives a description that is neither awaited nor spent. The heavens and the earth have their own entries in the glossary too.

It does not say "able to create them". It says "able to create the like of them", and what the ability is hung on is the like. The root m-th-l is the settling of one form onto another in its fine detail, and then the fastening of the one to the other; from it comes the word for a model that is copied so that something is made on its pattern. A like, in these letters, runs alongside and is not the same thing: it matches and it is not it. That is what the verse says, and there the reading stops. What the wording places under the ability is the making of something that runs alongside them, and they themselves are not put in the position of the thing made. Whoever measures the smaller against the larger will find the heavens and the earth at the head of this sentence and the like of them at its close.

"And He has set" is a past joined to a past, and setting has its own entry in the glossary. The particle in "for them" is one of assignment: the term is laid down for their sake, not clamped over them the way a siege is laid. And "a term" is indefinite, given no date and no measure. The root ʾ-j-l is a holding-in that is screened in the hollow and then fastened to a limit it runs out at; a term, in these letters, is a stretch hidden from view and tied to an end it arrives at, which is why the one word falls both on the whole stretch and on its last point. Then the description: "in which there is no wavering". Wavering, in its root, is a running that will not settle and then clings to the one it is in and does not leave him. And here it is denied of the term itself, of what is inside it. It is not denied of their souls; it is denied of the limit that was laid down. What stands, stands, however much the one looking at it may ripple.

This closing has already fallen in this Surah: ﴿فَأَبَىٰ أَكْثَرُ النَّاسِ إِلَّا كُفُورًا﴾. And now: ﴿فَأَبَى الظَّالِمُونَ إِلَّا كُفُورًا﴾. One verb, one exception, one thing excepted, and nothing changes but the subject. See how it narrows. The first was qualified by number, "most of the people", a ruling passed on a quantity and not on a quality. The second is qualified by an act, a participle naming what they do. The description has moved from an amount that can be counted to a work that can be ascribed; wrongdoing has its own entry in the glossary. And "refused all but" is an exception out of an emptied field: the refusing falls on everything, and nothing escapes it except the one thing excepted. They did not pick one item out of several; they refused the whole and kept one. Whoever refuses everything except a covering has made the covering the whole of what he holds.

A limit with no wavering inside it, and a people with nothing left in their hands but what hides.

Two Readings

The two readings do not conflict. The first gathers the verse into one argument and fixes its terms; the second follows what the wording states and what it leaves indefinite, and reads the narrowing of the subject in a closing where nothing else changed. This book chooses the additional listening.