Commentary

The Surah opens with a form that holds a negation and an oath in one breath: lā ("no"), followed by uqsimu ("I swear"). In Arabic this construction is a strengthening, not a weakening, and what follows "I do not swear" is more emphatic than what follows "I swear" alone. The negation at the head of the phrase leaves the oath in place and lifts the need for one: the matter is plainer than swearing could make it, and yet the oath descends to bear witness.

So the phrase sets the listener in two places at once: it tells him that what is coming is manifest and beyond proof, and it swears upon it all the same, to fix it in the heart. Whoever weighs the opening sees that this doubled emphasis prepares for what lies ahead, a human being in hardship and a steep path not yet stormed; the oath readies the ear for the weight of what will be said.

The verb uqsimu comes from the root q-s-m, whose core sense is a cutting that apportions. Qisma is the dividing of a thing into shares by a separating edge; qasīm is the one who shares with another and takes a bounded portion; miqsam is the place where the two portions part. The oath belongs to this same root, as a swearing that cuts cleanly between truth and doubt and binds the one who swears to what he said with a bond that does not come loose.

Whoever swears, then, has laid down a limit and placed himself on a known side of it. That is why, in the Book, the oath stands at the head of whatever is to be made firm: wavering is cut away first, and what follows is then built on the cut ground. Here the cutting falls on the witness of a place that is present: "this bounded ground, this city."

The demonstrative hādhā, "this," points to something present and witnessed. Rather than naming the place, the verse points to it as though it lay between the listener's hands, that is, the ground on which the one addressed now stands. Balad, from b-l-d, is the bounded place where the traveller settles and goes no further, the ground its people grow used to and keep to. One says balada bi-l-makān of a man who clings to a place and does not stir from it, and al-balīd is one grown heavy who does not move. In its root, then, balad is a holding, fixed ground at which travelling comes to an end.

An oath by a place pointed at with "this" makes the ground itself a witness, fixed underfoot, neither passing away nor open to dispute. What follows ties the oath to the one addressed himself, for the next verse says that he is a dweller, loosed and at home, in this ground. So the place sworn by is the place that carries the whole account, a fixed ground over which runs what does not stay fixed.

The Surah opens with an oath preceded by a negation, "I do not swear," a form that doubles the emphasis: it declares the matter plainer than swearing could make it, and then swears upon it in affirmation. The root q-s-m signifies a cutting that apportions and binds, so the oath cuts doubt away and ties the swearer to what he said. What is sworn by is "this bounded ground, this city," a ground pointed to as present, and balad, from b-l-d, is a holding, fixed place where travelling comes to rest. On this fixed and witnessed ground, then, the verse raises an oath that makes ready for the weight of what follows, and it ties that oath to the one addressed, who dwells in this very place.

Two Readings

The two readings do not conflict. The first names the place; the second hears, in both roots, the shape of an affirming cut and a ground that holds. This book chooses the additional listening.

Commentary

After the first verse swears by the ground, the phrase turns to the addressee himself: wa-anta ("and you"). The wāw here joins rather than separates, folding the addressee into the scene sworn by instead of leaving him as one looking on from outside. It is as though the oath by the ground did not complete its meaning until it was tied to the one who dwells in it.

The present-tense pronoun anta, used in addressing him, fixes the listener in his place: he is present and faced with his own state, not absent and spoken about. The verse gathers the witness of the ground and the witness of the one upon it, and brings the oath and what is sworn by together in a single place.

The word ḥill is from the root ḥ-l-l, which turns on alighting at a place and on the loosing of a knot. To ḥalla at a place is to set down one's pack and settle, and the maḥall of a people is the spot where they alight. In its other face the root turns on undoing what was bound: to ḥalla a knot is to untie it, and the ḥalāl is that from which restriction has come loose, so that it is released. The two faces are one breath: whoever alights at a place has loosed the binding of his pack and let himself go free in it.

In the verse, then, ḥill carries both senses: the addressee is one who alights here and settles, and one released here, not barred. He is in the place as one is in a place of his own, where what is owed to him differs from what is owed to a passing stranger. The oath by the ground gains weight when the addressee himself dwells in it: the verse swears by a ground and then shows that the one addressed is its child, alighting in it.

The thing sworn by, "this ground," is brought back in the very same wording as in the first verse. Balad, from b-l-d, is the bounded, holding place where the traveller settles and goes no further, the ground its people grow used to and keep to. The repetition is a fixing, not an empty saying-again: the ground by which the oath bore witness is the very ground in which the one addressed dwells.

The pointing word "this" keeps the place present between the listener's hands, so that the mind does not turn aside to some other, imagined ground. The verse tightens the knot between three things: an oath that has cut, a ground fixed underfoot, and one addressed who dwells in it and is loosed in it.

The verse joins onto the oath of the first with a turn toward the one addressed, "and you," tying him to the ground sworn by and making him part of the scene. Ḥill, from ḥ-l-l, is an alighting that settles and a loosing that releases, so the one addressed alights at the place, settles in it, and is loosed in it. "This ground" returns in the very same wording, from b-l-d, a holding and fixed ground, as a fixing, not a repetition. So the oath by the ground completes its meaning when it shows that the one addressed dwells in it: the witness of the place meets the witness of its child who dwells in it, in preparation for what will be said afterward about the hardship, the kabad, of this human being.

Two Readings

The two readings do not conflict. The first fixes the addressee and the place; the second hears, in the root, the shape of a settling alighting and a releasing loosing. This book chooses the additional listening.

Commentary

After the oath by the fixed ground in which the one addressed dwells, the oath moves on to a living origin that begets: "and by a begetter." The wāw here is an oath wāw joining the thing sworn by to what came before it, so that the witness of lineage is added to the witness of the place. The begetter is indefinite and unspecified: anyone who has begotten, an origin from which a branch comes out, not a particular begetter who is named.

The indefiniteness widens the meaning rather than confining it: the oath is by the begetter in his capacity as begetter, that is, as a source from which another proceeds. So the oath passes from the fixity of the ground underfoot to the flow of life from origin to branch, from a place where the traveller settles to a lineage in which the one before is joined to the one after.

The next phrase is "and by what he begot." The root w-l-d turns on the coming-forth of a living branch from an origin that keeps it joined to itself. Begetting is the issuing of the child from its begetter, to which it stays joined by descent; the walad is what came out of the origin and carries from it; the mawlid is the place or the time of that coming-forth. The origin begets and the branch is begotten, and between them there remains a bond that does not break, joining the begetter to what he begot and tying the begotten to the one who begot it.

The word mā ("what") keeps the begotten indefinite and unspecified: "what he begot" is everything that came forth from the begetter, not one particular individual. So the verse gathers the oath by origin and by branch together, by the begetter as one who begets and by the begotten as one who is begotten. The oath by this pair takes as witness the lasting of life in its joining, an origin from which a branch proceeds and the branch then becoming an origin that begets.

The oath moves from the fixed ground of the two verses before it to a living origin that begets, "and by a begetter," with an oath wāw that adds the witness of lineage to the witness of the place. The begetter is indefinite, meaning anyone who has begotten, taken as a source from which another proceeds. "What he begot," from w-l-d, is the coming-forth of a living branch from an origin that joins it to itself with a bond that does not break, while mā leaves the begotten unspecified and takes in everything that came forth from the begetter. So the verse swears by origin and branch together, taking the running of life in its joining as witness after the fixity of the ground was taken as witness, and it makes ready for what will be said of the human being who comes forth from this lineage.

Two Readings

The two readings do not conflict. The first fixes the begetter and the begotten in a known chain; the second hears, in the root, the shape of an origin that puts forth and a branch joined to it. This book chooses the additional listening.

Tadabbur

The oath in this verse falls not on a particular parent nor a particular child, but on the shape of begetting itself: an origin from which a branch proceeds. This indefiniteness makes the thing sworn by a general law and not a single event: wherever there is a begetter there is a begotten joined to it, and whenever the begotten becomes a begetter the turn comes round again.

Its placement after the oath by the ground reveals a gradation: first what holds firm underfoot is sworn by (the ground), then the one who dwells upon it, then the life that runs in it begetting more. The fixed carries the running; the ground carries the lineage. To swear by all of this readies what follows about the human in hardship: the being born into this joining is the very one of whom it will be said that he was created in toil.

And in gathering origin and branch into a single oath there is a witnessing that life does not stand by a single, severed thing, but by a joined chain: no begetter without a begotten proceeding from him, no begotten without a begetter he came forth from. The oath takes the joining itself as witness, not the two ends apart.

Perhaps in swearing by "a begetter and what he begot," both unnamed, there is a gesture toward the chain of begetting along its whole length: every begetter was once begotten, and every begotten may become a begetter, so that the links run back into a depth no counting encompasses. This deliberate indefiniteness may be a pointing to the thing sworn by being this living succession in its entirety, a bond stretched across times beyond measure, joining each being to the one before and the one after, as though the verse takes as witness the river of life flowing from a far origin that does not break. We assert none of this with certainty; it is only a listening for what the indefiniteness may carry of breadth.