Yūnus 10:62-64

"Know that the friends of God have nothing to fear, nor will they grieve. · They are those who believe and who have been guarding themselves. · Theirs is the good news in the life of this world and in the hereafter. There is no changing the words of God. That is the great triumph."

The construct occurs in this form only here in the Qurʾān.

The root و-ل-ي: to be near, to be adjoining. Walī — the one who is near, who takes charge of another's affair, the friend. The core of the word is absence of distance.

And the most important thing to record is this: the verse gives the definition itself, and the next verse is that definition.

Alladhīna āmanū wa kānū yattaqūn — they believed and they were guarding themselves.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the presence of the sixty-third verse: the construct is not left open, it is defined at once. And there are two things in the definition: an acceptance (āmanū, perfect) and a continuity (kānū yattaqūn, kāna + imperfect — which states continuation).

A note per the method (Method): I do not enter the mystical and theological debates built around this construct through history. Since the verse itself gives a definition, I do not go beyond the definition.

The construct was treated in the index: al-Aḥqāf 46/13 and Fuṣṣilat 41/30.

The core recorded in the section on al-Aḥqāf was this, and I rely on it: the construct closes off both directions of time — khawf belongs to the future, ḥuzn to the past. Neither what waits ahead, that is, nor what is left behind.

And in the section on Fuṣṣilat the difference between the two sūras was tabulated: in al-Aḥqāf a statement of ruling, in Fuṣṣilat direct address from the mouths of the angels (allā takhāfū wa lā taḥzanū).

The three places can be set side by side:

And Yūnus adds two things:

First: the particle a-lā. The sentence opens with a calling of attention — with a particle used in only four places in the sūra.

Second: the time of the good news. Lahumu'l-bushrā fi'l-ḥayāti'd-dunyā wa fi'l-ākhira.

And this coincides exactly with Fuṣṣilat 41/31: naḥnu awliyāʾukum fi'l-ḥayāti'd-dunyā wa fi'l-ākhira — "we are your friends in the life of this world and in the hereafter." And it was recorded there: "what is promised does not belong only to what comes after."

The shared wording between the two verses must be recorded, and it is entirely a datum of the text:

The same root (و-ل-ي) and the same construction of time, in two sūras. I record this as an observation about the wording.

بُشْرَىٰ — root ب-ش-ر: skin, the outer surface; and from this the news that makes a face open up. The concrete root of the word must be recorded: good news is what comes out on the face. And this can be read together with the scene of faces in the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh verses.

And explanations of what the good news amounts to in this world are transmitted in the classical commentaries (a righteous dream, the good news at the moment of death, people's remembering one with good, and the like). I do not relate these explanations here, because none of them has any indication in the verse, and invented transmission is forbidden in this series. I leave it at what the verse says: the good news is there in both times.

لَا تَبْدِيلَ لِكَلِمَٰتِ ٱللَّهِ — and the demand of the fifteenth verse is closed here.

How the sentence is built must be recorded: the lā here is the lā that negates a whole class (the same structure was treated at al-Baqara 2/256). It is not, that is, "there is little changing": the very category of changing is removed.

This is a weave that can be verified within the sūra, and I record it as my own reading.