النازعات · الآية 15

Commentary

Up to the verse before this one, the speech concerned a group that is never named, "hearts, on that day, throbbing without rest", and then "and at once, there they are, at the one that does not close". Here a single kāf, "you", comes down, and in place of a plural and an absent third person there is one addressed, with the account set in his hand.

Hal is the particle of asking, and the one asking here is the one who will supply the account himself; the question therefore seeks no knowledge and instead digs a place. A person who is questioned listens closely, while a person told outright hears while occupied elsewhere. The asking empties the ear before it is filled.

Atā, from ʾ-t-y, denotes a setting out that runs on and then meets its place; from it comes al-atiyy, the flood that reaches a people's land from rain that did not fall on them. The direction of motion in this verb is therefore known, running from the account to the one addressed, and the verse does not say: have you reached the account of Mūsā.

Ḥ-d-th is one movement in three stages: a hollow that holds in the depth, then a thrust that drives forward, then a fine scattering that is not taken back. Not every speech is a ḥadīth; a ḥadīth is what was held shut, then went out and travelled among people without ever returning to its hollow.

For this reason the word is read here at its own measure: what reaches the one addressed in this verse is the last stage of that movement, the scattering. What is still shut in its hollow cannot be listened to from within; it is picked up where it has spread.

The verse gave a name, and so he is named, without attaching to the name one further letter: no lineage, no people, no time, no land. He is a single word set at the end of the verse, and the verse halts at it.

At this name the fall of the Surah turns over. Before it the closings had followed one another on a tāʾ marbūṭa: al-rājifa, al-rādifa, wājifa, khāshiʿa, al-ḥāfira, khāsira, al-sāhira; with the coming of "Mūsā", the closing came to rest on an alif maqṣūra. The subject changed, and with it the breath on which it is spoken, and the one word carried both changes together.

After throbbing hearts that belong to no one named, a single kāf, "you", comes down, and the account passes into the hand of one addressed in particular. Hal is put here by the one who holds the answer himself, and it therefore digs a place rather than asking for knowledge. Atāka, "has it come to you", is from ʾ-t-y, a setting out that runs on and then meets its place, so that the motion runs from the account to the one addressed, not from the one addressed to the account. Ḥadīth is from ḥ-d-th: a hollow that holds, then a thrust that drives through, then a scattering that is not taken back; what is held out here is thus the last of the stages and not the first. Then comes "Mūsā", a bare name with nothing set beside it, at which the closing turns over from the tāʾ marbūṭa to the alif maqṣūra. A question of four words opens a door without saying what lies behind it.

Two Readings

The two readings do not conflict. The first completes the account from what is known of it; the second reads the direction inside the verb, the sense of the word for speech, and the turn of the closing at the name. This book chooses the additional listening.