الطارق · الآية 11

Commentary

The first verse swore by "the heaven, and by the night-comer that knocks," and the heaven came there in its general kind. This verse takes up the oath by it again with a new determination: "the one of returning." Not everything in the heaven necessarily draws attention to this trait, but the verse throws its light on it here, after the returning of the human had already been named.

And the new oath opens a second half of the Surah. The first half began with a heaven and a piercing star, then took up the soul, the human, the returning and the secrets. The second begins with a heaven that has returning for its own, and will then take up the earth and the word that cuts. The correspondence is one of structure.

Dhāt, in Arabic, names the bearer of the trait. Dhāt māl, the one who has wealth; dhāt khalq ḥasan, the one who has a fine constitution. And the annexation fastens the trait to what it describes with a fastening of its own kind, as though the trait were born from it and not laid upon it.

"The heaven, the one of returning": the heaven whose property is returning. And the root itself carries every image of this sort: the motion that goes out and then turns back toward its beginning. What rises and comes down, what circles and comes again, what passes and returns at its term. The verse does not fix one image to the exclusion of the others, it leaves the meaning open under the root. The whole heaven is full of motions of this sort, and so it is "the one of returning."

The root r-j-ʿ appeared in the eighth verse: ﴿إِنَّهُ عَلَىٰ رَجْعِهِ لَقَادِرٌ﴾, "He is, over bringing him back, fully able." And it comes back here in the trait of the heaven: ﴿وَالسَّمَاءِ ذَاتِ الرَّجْعِ﴾, "By the heaven, the one of returning." The same word in the two places, but the locus differs. There, the returning of the human; here, the returning of the heaven.

And the parallel is intended. The power that returns the human is the power that returns what is in the heaven. The heaven has returning by nature, and the human has it by measure. And whoever has grown used to the image of the heaven in his days has grown used to the image of returning in himself. The heaven is a school in which the eye trains on what runs in the self.

A second oath opens the Surah's second half, and the heaven comes back, but its trait changes: "By the heaven, the one of returning." Dhāt fastens the trait to what it describes with a fastening of its own kind, as though it were born from it. Al-rajʿ, from r-j-ʿ, is the motion that goes out and then turns back toward its beginning. And the root itself has come back from the eighth verse, where the power to bring the human back was described; it returns here as a trait of the heaven. The heaven has returning by nature: everything that rises in it comes down, everything that circles in it comes again, a continuous returning under one root. And the oath by it, after the mention of the power to bring the human back, raises a parallel: whoever has grown used to the image of returning in the heaven, in his own days, has grown used to the image of returning in himself. The heaven is a school in which the eye trains on what runs in the self.

Two Readings

The two readings do not conflict. The first identifies the kind of return; the second leaves it open under the root. This book chooses the additional listening.