وَلَوْ شَآءَ رَبُّكَ لَجَعَلَ ٱلنَّاسَ أُمَّةً وَٰحِدَةً وَلَا يَزَالُونَ مُخْتَلِفِينَ · إِلَّا مَن رَّحِمَ رَبُّكَ وَلِذَٰلِكَ خَلَقَهُمْ
"Had your Lord willed, He would have made people a single community. But they will go on differing — except those on whom your Lord has had mercy. And for this He created them."
| View | What dhālika points to |
|---|---|
| A | To the differing — people were created so as to diverge |
| B | To the mercy — the nearest word named is raḥima; the purpose of the creation is mercy |
| C | To both at once — the possibility of divergence and the possibility of mercy together |
No preference is adopted. But grammatically this much can be recorded: the nearest referent of a demonstrative is the element immediately preceding it in the sentence, and that element is man raḥima rabbuk. This is a ground, not a definite ruling; in the classical exegesis all three views have their defenders.
The same structure was treated at Yūnus 10/19 and 10/99 (wa law shāʾa rabbuka la-āmana man fi'l-arḍi kulluhum jamīʿā); I rely on that treatment.
And I record this as my own reading, and it is not binding: the first half of the sentence attaches the possibility of a single community to God's willing and reports that it did not come about. Plurality, that is, is named not as a defect but as an order — and at al-Ḥujurāt 49/13 (wa jaʿalnākum shuʿūban wa qabāʾila li-taʿārafū) this was treated explicitly.
وَتَمَّتْ كَلِمَةُ رَبِّكَ لَأَمْلَأَنَّ جَهَنَّمَ مِنَ ٱلْجِنَّةِ وَٱلنَّاسِ أَجْمَعِينَ (119) — tammat kalimatu rabbik: and nine verses earlier it had been said wa law lā kalimatun sabaqat min rabbik (110). The same word (كلمة), once as "gone before" and once as "completed", twice in the same region.