الليل · الآية 4

Commentary

Inna is an emphasis set at the head of the sentence, and the lām of la-shattā sets a second one upon the predicate. Their meeting makes a doubled emphasis, and it says that what is spoken here is not a passing state. The striving is diverse by its own structure, not by accident. And this is what called for the great oath before it: a night and a day, a male and a female, and then the declaration that the striving itself branches, and branches deep.

And the reader, in this verse, changes place. The verses before were speaking about the cosmos and about the bringing into being. This one turns toward him: "your strivings." The kāf is a pronoun of address; it summons the reader directly. What had been a spectacle has become a speech.

The root s-ʿ-y names a gliding that clings to an aim. From it comes saʿā fī ḥājatih, he walked toward his need with his face set toward it. And al-masʿā is the place in which such striving runs. Striving, in the Book, is named in noble places: "and that the human has nothing except what he strove for," and "and whoever willed what comes after, and strove toward her with the striving that is hers." The word is neutral in itself: it catches the human in his movement toward what he wants.

And here, in this Surah, the word comes down as a plural annexed to the pronoun of those addressed: "your strivings." Not one individual. Every reader is summoned. The Surah does not deny the striving; it draws the eye to this, that the striving divides by its own structure. Every walker walks, but two walkings may go toward two sides that face each other.

Shattā is the plural of shatīt, from the root sh-t-t. The root names a dispersal in which each part settles inside its own limit. Not a shapeless scattering that ends in loss, but a bounded dispersal each of whose ends stands up by itself. And in the Book: "and sent water down from the sky. And by it We brought out pairs of scattered growth." The water that comes down is one, and out of it come pairs of plants of differing kinds, each of them distinct by its own limit.

And this is exactly what is said of the striving here. Striving is one notion in its form, for every human being is in a striving. But it disperses in its direction into distinct kinds. And the Surah will disclose, in the verses that follow, how this dispersal parts into two poles: the one who gave and guarded himself and confirmed the most-beautiful as true, and the one who withheld and counted himself self-sufficient and gave the lie. The cosmos runs in pairs, and human striving in its turn parts in its direction into a pair.

And the reader, hearing "Truly, your strivings are scattered into utterly diverse paths," has cause to stop himself: he is not a spectator of those being addressed, he stands in the middle of them. Striving, in its motion, is many; in its direction, it is few. And the Surah will take the reader, in a moment, to what fixes that direction.

The answer of the threefold oath comes down with two emphases: inna at its head, and the lām of la-shattā. The root s-ʿ-y is a walking whose aim stays stuck to the walker. Shattā is the plural of shatīt: dispersed. Striving is present in every human, and it is the dispersal of the directions that the proposition declares. The cosmos runs in pairs that face each other, and human striving goes toward two sides. The Surah discloses this parting as a fact and not as a reproach, then details where each direction ends.

Two Readings

The two readings do not conflict. The first preserves a generic meaning; the second registers the structural verdict. This book chooses the additional listening.