النازعات · الآية 11

Commentary

The interrogative a comes back at the head of the words, as it came in the verse before. But this time it enters upon idhā, and idhā is a particle of time for what is going to happen without fail. One who doubts that a thing will occur says in, "if"; one who has settled its time says idhā, "when". So in their wording they concede the appointment and push away what lies inside it.

Kunnā is from k-w-n: a coming-about that knots itself and holds on what it has fallen upon. Here it is the link that ties a subject to its predicate, so that what follows it becomes a settled condition rather than a possibility. They fixed the becoming with a particle and then with a verb, and then stood to deny what lies past it. An argument that opens by conceding is no argument for refusal.

They did not say "dust" here, and they did not say "crumbled remains". They said ʿiẓāman, "bones". And ʿ-ẓ-m is a knitting-together in the depth that is then closed over and covered, and then drawn into a clinging standing mass: a hard hidden frame that carries what overlays it.

This choice says more about them than they intended. They named the last thing in them that resists, the thing that stays when the flesh has gone off it. They built their case on the hardest thing they own, and the hardest thing we own is the thing we see last.

Then they describe that frame with what cancels it. N-kh-r is a hollow that holds and then loosens until it empties, and that emptiness runs through the body of a thing until it is everywhere in it and air passes through. From it comes the nakhīr, a sound that comes out only from a passage with nothing in it.

So the description eats the thing described. They chose bone because bone holds; then they said that its inside had turned to air. And this is their whole case: that what has nothing left in it to be gripped by is not gripped by any hand.

But the sound that runs through a hollowed bone runs through it because the bone has become a passage. And a passage lets in as it lets out. They made emptiness the obstacle, and emptiness does not stop whatever comes in.

The interrogative of denial comes back and enters upon idhā, a particle of time for what is going to happen, so they concede the hour and push away what is in it. Then kunnā, and k-w-n is a coming-about that knots and holds, so the condition after it is settled by their own wording. Then "bones", and ʿ-ẓ-m is a hard hidden frame that carries what overlays it, so they chose the most lasting thing in them to build their refusal on. Then "gone hollow", and n-kh-r is a body that empties until air passes through it, so the description undoes the thing described. A verse whose speakers rest their case on the claim that what has emptied out is not brought back, having just called it an open passage.

They picked the hardest thing they had, and then said its inside was air. Every word they chose to close the matter with leaves it open.

Two Readings

The two readings do not conflict. The first fills the ellipsis and attaches what was transmitted; the second halts at their own words and finds a concession inside the denial. This book chooses the additional listening.