طه · الآية 28

Commentary

The verb stands in the jussive as the answer to what came before it; the final nūn has been dropped, and that dropping is what shows it. Without it, this would read as a fourth request rather than as a consequence.

And its subject is a plural "they." It does not say "so that I may make it clear" or "so that I may explain." The verb in the answer belongs to other people. This is where the verse stands in the whole prayer: a knot was asked to be loosened, and the effect the verse names is the hearers' taking it in, not the speaker's relief.

F-q-h is a narrow splitting that penetrates to what has set fast in the depth and then empties that hollow so that what is in it becomes plain. It is not the arrival of a sound at an ear, nor the retaining of a wording after hearing it. Anyone who has listened to speech whose letters were perfectly clear and reached nothing through it knows the distance: the sound arrives and what is tied stays tied.

So in the previous verse a knot is to be untied at the place of issuing, and here a knot is to be split open at the place of receiving. Two knots, one at each end of speech.

And what is taken in is qawlī, my speech, not my tongue and not my voice. Q-w-l is what has set in the interior, drawn out until it stands forth distinct. The tongue was named in the verse before and is not named here: the matter has moved from the organ to what leaves it, and from the one asking to the ones addressed. The possessive yāʾ at the end is the same yāʾ that has been running through the whole prayer, chest and affair and tongue and speech. And the purpose that gathers all these requests has not yet been uttered, not by a single letter.

The knot is his, and the understanding is theirs. What the request is measured by is not what it costs him to speak but what reaches the ones listening.

Two Readings

The two readings agree that the goal is the hearer's understanding, and differ over what understanding is and where the second knot lies. This book chooses the additional listening.