الانشقاق · الآية 4

Commentary

In the verse before, the earth was the one acted upon: "is drawn out." Here it becomes the one acting: "it cast forth." The order does not reverse: it is spread first and casts afterwards; whatever has not been brought to its full reach still keeps a fold to hide things in, and what is spread to its last has nothing left to hold with.

Alqā is from l-q-y, which denotes a parting from something that held, and an arriving at a place: the thing leaves a hand that was gripping it and falls where it falls. The word carries the loosening of a grip and a coming to rest somewhere new, with no violence in it and no hurling.

This same root returns in the surah two verses on: "and so one who meets Him face to face." The earth casts, and the human being meets; two words of one root face in two directions, and what is let out of a grip here is faced, face to face, there.

The load is not named. "What" is said and left at that, and had a counting been wanted, it would have been counted. The relative pronoun in this place opens rather than encloses, taking in everything that was in it, with no list drawn up and no kind put ahead of another.

The verse says "inside it," not "upon it." The containment moves the eye from the surface to the interior: what is meant is what lay hidden within it, not what walked on its back, and one particle places the verse among things covered rather than among things in view.

Kh-l-w denotes an emptiness enclosed so that its place remains. "The place emptied" means that it was cleared of its occupant and itself remained, and khalāʾ is what has nothing occupying it. Emptying is the passing of what was in the container while the container stays behind, empty, not the passing of the container itself.

Takhallat is built on the form of an effort taken on and carried through step by step, that is, an emptying the earth undertakes itself and goes on with. It is not a repetition of what came before it: the casting falls on the load, while the withdrawing falls on the holding itself. The earth brought out what was in it first, and then it gave up being the one that holds.

A vessel that has been emptied is still a vessel waiting to be filled, whereas the one that has withdrawn has taken its hand off holding altogether. This is the last thing said of the earth's own act, after which the sentence already said to the sky is said to it.

The earth passes from being acted upon to acting: it was spread, and then it cast, and the order does not reverse, because what is folded hides and what is spread out holds nothing. Alqā is from l-q-y, a parting from what held and an arriving at a place, the loosening of a grip rather than a violent hurling; the root returns two verses on in "and so one who meets Him face to face," so that what was let slip here becomes a facing there. "What is inside it" is a relative pronoun that opens and does not enclose, and the particle of containment moves the eye to the interior rather than to the back. Then comes "took on its own emptying," from kh-l-w, an emptiness enclosed so that its place remains, on a form by which the earth takes upon itself the emptying of itself. So the first act falls on the load and the second on the holding, and the vessel that has taken its hand off holding no longer waits to be filled.

Two Readings

The two readings do not conflict. The first identifies what is cast; the second reads both roots and the order of the two verbs, and leaves "what" as open as it came. This book chooses the additional listening.

Tadabbur

What is in the inward is not named, and that is the verse's choice rather than a gap in it. Had one kind been named, the load would have become a kind; left open, it takes in everything ever put into an interior in order to disappear there. Whoever reads and finds no list looks into his own inward instead.

And the earth is not described here as taking revenge. Neither the root nor the form carries anger: a grip loosened, then a hand lifted off holding. The hardest thing that can happen to what is hidden is that the keeper stop keeping it.

And the order across the two verses is one: spreading, then bringing out, then withdrawing, then listening, then a verdict. The earth ends at the sentence the sky ended at, and not a letter is added for it or taken away.

Perhaps there is a resemblance here to what is known of how human communities have treated the ground: that they found no safer hiding place, and so committed to it their dead and the most precious things they owned; and then hardly a place is known where something was deposited and did not, at some time, come out of it again. What is dug for today in the layers of the earth was, in its own hour, a secret buried with the intention that it never be seen. It may be that this points to something: that the ground was never a keeper of secrets without end, but a keeper for a term. This is a conjecture offered as such and not loaded onto the verse, for the verse named neither what is cast out nor the time of the casting.