طه · الآية 108

Commentary

The verb of following is in the eighth form from t-b-ʿ, and the root is a close falling-in that grips and then runs on in the track. A follower is fastened to the one followed and then carried along behind him. And "the caller" is a definite active participle with nothing to identify it. It is not named, not described, and no place is given for where the calling comes from. It is known by its act alone.

The root d-ʿ-w is a driving push that extends until it reaches another and binds him to it. So a caller drives out his voice until it arrives and ties whoever it reaches. There is no hand in this root that seizes; there is a sound that binds. Read this against the line just before: ﴿لَّا تَرَىٰ فِيهَا عِوَجًا﴾, "you will see in it no bend," and no swell either. Nothing is left on the ground for the eye to steer by. What is followed is a voice, not a mark in the earth.

Then "no bend in him" is the previous line's word with its vowels unchanged: the same ʿiwaj there and here. What changed is the particle after it. There it was "in it," a container; here it is "to him," an attachment. There it was denied that a bend be seen in the ground; here it is denied that a bend belong to him. A denial of sight, then a denial of ownership. And the pronoun reaches most naturally to the caller: what was made level in the earth by an act is denied to the voice by a bare nominal clause. The ground came to be even; the caller has no lean in the first place.

Then the tense turns. "They follow" is an ongoing present; "the voices have sunk" is a completed past. The following is happening now and the sinking was finished before it. The shift is to be read, and the two times are not to be flattened. And the subject is "the voices," not the hearts. The verse attaches the act to what is heard; what has gone low here is a sound, not an inward organ, and whoever moves it to the heart has moved the subject off its place. The root kh-sh-ʿ is a deep, spreading emptying that issues from the core; from it comes the phrase for ground lying spent, whose motion has settled out of it. A voice that has khashaʿa is a voice emptied of its own fullness. And the particle before the divine name is one of belonging, and it is the name with which this sūra opened: ﴿الرَّحْمَٰنُ عَلَى الْعَرْشِ اسْتَوَىٰ﴾, and the name to which a people were returned elsewhere in it: ﴿وَإِنَّ رَبَّكُمُ الرَّحْمَٰنُ﴾. One name in all three places.

The address returns to the single hearer. One line earlier it was "you will see"; here it is "you hear." Two senses denied in two neighbouring lines. And read the difference between the denials. The first is absolute, with no exception: two things not seen. The second is restricted with "except": one thing is heard, and it is the least of things. The eye was given nothing; the ear was given the smallest thing that can be given. The root h-m-s is a fading held inwardly and then run out thin and unbroken; from it comes hamīs, the sound of camels' padded feet on the ground as they walk, which is barely caught at all. And the sound in this scene began already lowered: ﴿يَتَخَافَتُونَ بَيْنَهُمْ﴾, a lowering passed among a group inside their own circle. It ends here with that least thing being all there is to hear. What was a secret inside a company has become the only voice in the place.

On ground with no mark to steer by, what is followed is a voice. The word taken off the earth is given to the caller, and the sense that saw nothing is followed by the sense that hears the least thing there is.

Two Readings

The two readings do not conflict. The first identifies the caller and widens the sinking; the second reads the particle of attachment, the tense of the verb, the subject of the sinking, and the restriction placed on hearing. This book chooses the additional listening.