الانفطار · الآية 3

Commentary

The root b-ḥ-r denotes a holding that contains what is in its interior and then lets it run wide. So a baḥr, in the word, is a width bounded between two edges; without the edge it would be no baḥr, only water going off into the ground.

This is the side of it that goes unnoticed. One says baḥr and thinks of the width, forgetting the thing that holds, yet the noun stands on both together; much water that nothing holds is not called by this name.

It comes as a definite plural, al-biḥār, rather than as one sea pointed at. So the scene takes in every held width with two rims to it, and not one of them is left out.

The root f-j-r denotes a piercing that splits open what has massed behind a barrier and then sets it running. This is why Arabic says infajara of what comes out of its confinement all at once, and fajr of the dark splitting open on a light that was behind it. So breaching is the lifting of a barrier off what runs, not the destruction of what runs.

The verb comes on the doubled second-radical pattern, which denotes multiplication in the act: breach upon breach, not one breach. It is then built with its doer unnamed, so the doer is folded out of the wording as he was in the two verses before.

The two patterns differ, however. Infaṭarat and intatharat are verbs that happen to their own subject, whereas fujjirat is a verb done to the waters, with the doer unnamed. So the scene moves from a thing that opens out of itself to a thing that is opened upon. What was described by its confinement is the first to have the act fall upon it: the edge that had been holding is the thing that was lifted.

Al-biḥār comes from b-ḥ-r, a holding that contains and then runs wide, so the noun stands only on the width and the edge together; it comes as a definite plural, with no held width left out. Fujjirat comes from f-j-r, a splitting that brings out what massed behind a barrier and sets it running; it is on the pattern of multiplied action and built with its doer unnamed. After two verbs that befell their own subjects comes a verb done to its subject, and the thing described by its confinement is the first to have the act fall upon it. The verse says that the rim was opened, not that the water rose. A thing whose very name rests on its boundary is finished when the boundary is finished.

Two Readings

The two readings do not conflict. The first describes the event; the second reads the noun and the verb-pattern and stops at them. This book chooses the additional listening.