الانشقاق · الآية 19

Commentary

Three witnesses have passed, and their answer now follows. It arrives with an emphatic lām at the head of the verb and a doubled nūn at its end, so emphasis is packed twice into a single word after three oaths: five markers pulling tight on one sentence.

The root r-k-b denotes a rising that settles on what is beneath it and clings to it so as to be carried by it. The rider goes up onto something that bears him, and he does not walk. Had going on foot been meant, a word for travelling or for passing on would have served; since mounting was said, the passage is a carried one, not a performed one.

The address then becomes plural. The Surah had called one particular listener: "O human being, you are labouring toward your Rabb (the Nurturing Sustainer) with a labour that scores you." The labour is for a single man and the mounting for a company, and what was a call to one becomes an oath sworn about all.

The root ṭ-b-q denotes a broad closing-over that joins its place and binds upon it, with nothing left over and nothing falling short. From it come ṭabaq al-ināʾ, the lid that matches the mouth of a vessel exactly; ṭābaqa, said of a thing that answers another so closely that it lies flush upon it; and aṭbāq, the courses of a building set one over another, each closing exactly on the one below.

ʿAn is neither "to" nor "after", and a departure lies inside it: a layer is mounted in moving off from a layer. The particle puts a leaving into the movement as much as an arriving, and the second is never reached except by parting from the first.

Both words came indefinite. The verse does not say "the layer", names neither the first nor the last, and gives no number for them. The heaviest emphasis in the Surah has landed on the widest vagueness: that you will mount is affirmed, and what you will mount is left in silence. Where the verse falls silent, the reading falls silent too.

After three oaths the answer comes down bound tight by an emphatic lām and a doubled nūn. Tarkabunna, from r-k-b, denotes a rising that settles on what is beneath and is carried by it, so the passage is borne, not performed, and the rider owns no step of it. The address turns from one man called to his labour into a company sworn about. Ṭabaqan ʿan ṭabaq, from ṭ-b-q, denotes a broad cover that closes exactly on its place with nothing left over; from it come the vessel's lid that matches its mouth and the courses of a building that lie flush one on another. ʿAn puts a parting into the motion, and an arrival as well. Two indefinites follow, with no name and no number; the mounting is affirmed as strongly as language allows, and the thing mounted is left unnamed. The verse swears to the road and draws none of its stations.

Two Readings

The two readings do not conflict. The first sets out the identifications handed down and chooses among them; the second reads the emphasis, the particle and the indefiniteness, and leaves the identification open. This book chooses the additional listening.

Tadabbur

The verb chosen for this passage is a mounting and not a walking. A rider arrives without stepping, and moves by a power that is not his own. So the verse establishes a motion for those addressed and takes from them the claim to be the ones who make it.

And in the root, a ṭabaq is what closes on its place without overreaching it or falling short of it. So if a layer is mounted away from a layer, there is no drop between them and no gap: each state meets the one before it as a lid meets the mouth of its vessel. Nothing in this ascent is skipped.

Then, immediately after this, the speech is turned away from the company addressed and toward absent ones. The layer is mounted in this verse, and in the next the question is asked about those whom none of it moves. The certainty stands in one place and the turning-away in another.

Perhaps a likeness of the wording may be sought in what is observed of how things are built up in nature: that whatever rises there stands only on what lies beneath it, closing upon it; that a ring of a tree is never laid except upon a ring already there; and that the higher is never reached except by crossing the lower one at a time, with no leap. It may be that this points to something: that the wording was chosen because it describes the shape of ascent itself rather than any particular site of it. This is a conjecture offered as such and not loaded onto the verse, for the verse mentioned only a mounting, two indefinites, and a particle of moving-off, and it named no single layer and set no number for them.