طه · الآية 48

Commentary

They do not say "the torment is upon whoever gives the lie." They say that this has been conveyed to them. The report and the source of the report stand in one sentence: the words are carried across, and where they came from is carried with them. Inna affirms and qad with the past realizes: two emphases before the verb.

And the verb is from the root that opened this whole passage, where a conveying went to a mother who is not named. It closes it here with a conveying that comes to two men who are speaking. The same preposition governs at both ends.

There the verb came once in the active and once in the passive inside a single verse. Here only the passive stands.

There is a second difference to read. At the opening it said "what is conveyed," and the content was held back until an arrived in the next line. Here anna arrives inside the same sentence. What was delayed by a line at the opening is not delayed by a letter at the close.

Now set the two closing sentences one under the other. In the previous verse: peace upon whoever has followed the guidance. In this one: the torment upon whoever has given the lie and turned away.

A noun with the definite article, then ʿalā, then a general relative that specifies nobody, then a clause whose verb is in the past. One mould in two consecutive lines, and everything poured into it is different. One is peace and the other is torment.

And in neither is anyone named. The condition is a deed, and the relative stands open to whoever has done it.

ʿ-dh-b is a holding into which something painful runs, with no release for the one who has fallen into it. The word is definite, undescribed, unmeasured, with no time attached to it. And it is the root of the prohibition in the line just before, where they asked that a people not be tormented. A prohibition against tormenting a people, and then a report of a torment resting on a deed and not on a people.

Kadhdhaba is in the second form, and what was given the lie is not said. Tawallā is in the fifth, and the one turned away from is not said. Two past verbs with no object and no preposition, in the manner of the reason for the whole sending, which also stood intransitive.

The root k-dh-b is the bringing out of an outside that contradicts what is kept hidden within. And w-l-y is a nearness with no gap between its two sides, whose fifth form is a turning of the face away.

In this passage two hoped-for ends were joined by "or," then two feared things by "or," then "I hear and I see" by "and." Here the "and" comes again: gave the lie and turned away. One of the two does not suffice for this condition.

And the condition for the peace, one line earlier, was a single verb; the condition for the torment is two. Two sentences on one mould, and one of them holds a single condition while the other holds two, taken together.

The message reports that it is a message. And the two closings are cut from the same mould: same preposition, same open relative, opposite contents, and one condition against two.

Two Readings

The two readings both take the sentence as the close of the message, and differ over identifying what was left definite but undescribed and over bounding what was left intransitive. This book chooses the additional listening.