Commentary

The surah begins on one indefinite word, with no verb to carry it and no clause to prepare for it. Wayl stands at the head of the sentence, and its indefiniteness leaves it with no boundary by which it could be measured out.

The root w-y-l denotes a joining that runs and then hangs on and stays. So this is something that has already reached and stuck fast, not a danger whose arrival is awaited; a danger is guarded against, whereas what clings is carried.

The word lands before any act is described or any trade named. The surah sets down the mark first, then points to whoever wears it, and only in the two verses that follow does it show what his hands do.

The verse names no one and mentions no place, no market and no craft. It describes a movement and then makes the description into the name by which they are called.

The root ṭ-f-f spells out what they do: a broad closing that covers (ṭ), a narrow splitting open (f), and a second f that separates and pushes away, that is, a level surface split at its brim so that what sits there is moved off. From this root Arabic has ṭufāfa, what comes near the mouth of a vessel without reaching it, and al-ṭaff, what lies close to the water's edge; the whole root lives on the rim.

The precision lies in this: the one who does it takes the last hair of the measure, not the measure itself. Had he taken more, it would have shown, and he would have been called by another name; his work is calibrated to stay beneath the eye.

The form is the second, the form of repetition and intent, which describes a craft perfected by keeping at it, not one slip of the hand, and whoever perfects a small thing has perfected it a thousand times.

Between the two words stands a single lām, the lām of belonging, by which what follows it owns what precedes it. The ruin is theirs as a house is its owner's: it is assigned to them as a possession is assigned, not driven at them from outside.

Two letters answer each other here. Their craft is the separating of the thin margin and the pushing of it away, and the root by which they are named closes on an f that parts and removes; the word that came down on them closes on a lām that hangs on and does not let go. What they pushed away by a hair returns to them held fast by that lām.

The verse consists of two words, one that cuts away and one that clings.

The verse holds two words and one connecting letter. Wayl heads the sentence with no verb to carry it, and its root w-y-l is a joining that runs and then hangs on and stays, so it is a mark that has arrived, not a danger still coming. Then comes muṭaffifīn, a description turned into a name, whose root ṭ-f-f lives on the rim, that is, on the thin amount at the mouth of a vessel that is split off and set aside, as in ṭufāfa and in what lies near the water's edge. The form is the second, so this is a practice and not a slip, and the whole skill of it is to stay beneath the eye. The lām between them is the lām of belonging, which makes the ruin their property. The surah sets an f that parts against a lām that holds, and it opens with the mark before showing the act in the two verses that follow.

Two Readings

The two readings do not conflict. The first identifies and completes; the second counts what the wording actually holds and stops there. This book chooses the additional listening.

Commentary

The relative pronoun comes after the ruin, and no verb follows it directly; what follows is idhā, the particle for what happens again and again.

So these people are known by what comes from them every time the occasion arrives, not by one act that occurred once. Idhā opens a door that is entered time after time.

This agrees with the form in the preceding verse: muṭaffifīn is of the second form, the form of what is kept at, and idhā is a frame that recurs. The description is built on habit, not on an incident.

Measuring, in its root k-y-l, is an amount held in a hollow that keeps it and then taken by that measure, like a vessel filled to a marked line and a hand then closing on what is in it.

In place of kālū, "they measured," the verse has iktālū, the eighth form, whose infixed t turns the act toward its own doer's account: they took the measure for themselves. One added letter inside the verb settles which way the benefit runs.

Then comes ʿalā, a particle of being over; had plain taking-from been meant, "from the people" would have served. Here the measuring falls on the people as a load falls on whoever carries it, so the exchange becomes a bearing, and one of the two parties stands above the other.

Between the verb and those whose right is at stake there stands a full, visible particle. It counts here as one letter, because the next verse will drop it.

The root w-f-y denotes an enclosing through which the flow runs until it reaches its furthest point, so that no place inside what is enclosed is left empty. From it Arabic says that a measure wafā when it came to its completion, and wafāʾ is the discharging of an obligation entire and undiminished.

The form is the tenth, the form of seeking and of following a thing out. The report is that they demand the measure's fullness and chase it down, not that the measure came full for them; the picture is of a hand shaking the vessel so that whatever clung to its wall comes down.

Taking in full is, in itself, the reaching of a right. The verse places it in half the picture and waits for the other half, an eye that sees the single hair when the hair is coming toward it.

The verse shows one half of the craft. "Those who, whenever" builds the description on what recurs rather than on a single event, in keeping with the second form in muṭaffifīn. Three places then lean one way: iktālū is the eighth form, whose t turns the measuring toward its doer's own account; ʿalā is a particle of being over, making the exchange a load with one party above the other; and yastawfūn is the tenth form, a demand for completion and a chasing of it, on a root w-f-y that denotes reaching the furthest point of what is enclosed, leaving no empty place in it. Between the verb and those whose right is at stake stands a full, visible particle, the spot to which the next verse listens. Theirs is a craft that knows the single hair when the hair is coming toward it.

Two Readings

The two readings do not conflict. The first eases the sense and completes the scene; the second weighs each letter where it stands. This book chooses the additional listening.

Commentary

In the preceding verse the verb was iktālū, with a visible particle standing between it and the people. Here the verb is bare, kālū, and the pronoun sticks to its end with nothing in between.

The added letter in the verb and the particle fall away together: the t that had turned the measuring toward their own account went when the measuring became someone else's, and nothing came in to replace the ʿalā that had set them above the people.

In Arabic one says kāla lahu when a man measures out to the holder of a right what is his, and the lām there marks a due share. That very lām is the one absent here, that is, the letter left out is the one that says "so-and-so has a share."

The verse then shortens the other party as well. In the previous verse it stood as a full noun, "the people"; here it is a pronoun fused to the verb, a whole word when something is taken from them and two letters when something is given.

So the verse does with its letters what it reports of their hands: it takes a letter off the edge of the sentence as they take a hair off the edge of the vessel, and here the shaving reaches the grammar before it reaches the grain.

Aw puts weighing in the place of measuring, a second instrument for one craft. What is measured is gauged by its bulk and what is weighed by its heaviness, and the shortfall crosses both instruments.

The root w-z-n denotes the binding of a compacted heaviness to its counterpart until an even limit stands between them. Its three letters set up the two sides: a knotting that encloses, something compacted under pressure in a narrow place, and a holding in a hollow against which another is set.

So a balance is, in the very word for it, a relation: one pan knows its own weight only by a second pan, and a beam comes level only between two. Whoever works one pan alone undoes the thing on which the word itself stands.

The root kh-s-r is a diminishing that seeps and runs and does not halt: a rarefying that empties (kh), a continuous running (s), and a sending-on that does not break off (r). From it comes the saying that a trader khasira when he came out of an exchange with less than he went in with.

The form is the fourth: yukhsirūn means putting the diminishing into another, and the hamza at the head of the verb carries the act away from its doer and onto someone else.

The pronoun "them" clung to the two verbs before it, "they measured them," "they weighed them"; the third verb, yukhsirūn, then comes bare, with no object named. The verse lets the diminishing loose without saying where it comes to rest.

This leaves a gap at the end of the verse, which the next verse fills: a running-down let loose with no named account is given an account two words later.

The verse turns over in its letters, and in its sense as well. The t of iktālū is gone and kālū stands bare; ʿalā is gone with nothing in its place; the lām by which one says kāla lahu, measured out to the holder of a right, is the one omitted; and "the people" has become a pronoun fused to the verb where it had been a full noun. Then comes "or weighed them," a second instrument for one craft, on a root w-z-n that binds a heaviness to its counterpart, so that a balance is a relation of two sides and not a single pan. Then yukhsirūn, in the fourth form, on a root kh-s-r denoting a diminishing that runs and does not halt; the verb carries no object, after two verbs to which the pronoun clung. The verse takes a letter off the edge of the sentence as they take a hair off the edge of the vessel, and leaves at its end a gap that the next verse fills.

Two Readings

The two readings do not conflict. The first supplies what was omitted so the sense runs straight; the second listens to the omission itself. This book chooses the additional listening.