Yūnus 10:37-40

"This Qurʾān could not have been invented by anyone other than God; rather it confirms what came before it and sets out the Book in detail — a Book from the Lord of all the worlds, in which there is no doubt. · Do they say 'He invented it'? Say: 'Then bring a sūra like it, and call on whoever you can besides God — if you are truthful.' · No: they denied what they could not encompass in knowledge and whose taʾwīl had not yet come to them. Those before them denied in the same way. Look, then, at how the wrongdoers ended."

This challenge was treated in the index at al-Baqara 2/23 and al-Ṭūr 52/34, and the three scales of it in the Qurʾān were tabulated there: a single discourse (al-Ṭūr 52/34), ten sūras (Hūd 11/13), one sūra (al-Baqara 2/23; Yūnus 10/38).

And the note entered there holds here too, and I repeat it: "since the order of revelation of these sūras is not known with certainty, the chronological construction 'much was asked first and then it was reduced' is a supposition."

At al-Nūr 24/1 the use of the word sūra in the Qurʾān was treated; I rely on that treatment.

What belongs here is this addition: wa'dʿū mani'staṭaʿtum min dūni'llāh — "and call on whoever you can besides God". The challenge, that is, is opened not to one person but to a whole company.

This sentence is the sharpest expression of the sūra's axis of knowledge.

How it is built must be recorded: the act of denying is tied to a deficiency of knowledge.

Lam yuḥīṭū bi-ʿilmihī — "they could not encompass its knowledge". The root ح-و-ط had occurred in the twenty-second verse: uḥīṭa bihim — they were encompassed. The same root, once for a man's being encompassed at sea and once for man's failure to encompass knowledge. I record this as an observation about the wording.

And at al-Baqara 2/255 wa lā yuḥīṭūna bi-shayʾin min ʿilmihī had been treated — there too the same root was used for the limit of knowledge. I rely on that treatment.

وَلَمَّا يَأْتِهِمْ تَأْوِيلُهُ — "while its taʾwīl had not yet come to them."

The root أ-و-ل: the origin to which a thing returns, the place it arrives at. Taʾwīl — the real counterpart at which a thing arrives in the end. The classical commentaries differ over what the word means here:

Both readings are transmitted; I do not impose a preference. The root of the word ("the place arrived at") suits both.

And the particle lammā must be recorded: unlike lam, it states "it has not happened yet, but it is expected". The sentence, that is, implies that the taʾwīl will come.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is this particle: the denial is a verdict given before the term of waiting is out. And the sūra will show this in a scene in the fiftieth and fifty-first verses: when the taʾwīl comes there is belief, but the time has passed.

وَمِنْهُم مَّن يُؤْمِنُ بِهِۦ وَمِنْهُم مَّن لَّا يُؤْمِنُ بِهِ (40) — a note per the method (Method): the verse does not bind those addressed to a wholesale ruling; it distinguishes. The same care was treated at al-Raʿd 13/36 and al-ʿAnkabūt 29/47; I rely on that treatment.