إِنَّ ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ وَعَمِلُوا۟ ٱلصَّٰلِحَٰتِ وَأَخْبَتُوٓا۟ إِلَىٰ رَبِّهِمْ أُو۟لَٰٓئِكَ أَصْحَٰبُ ٱلْجَنَّةِ هُمْ فِيهَا خَٰلِدُونَ · مَثَلُ ٱلْفَرِيقَيْنِ كَٱلْأَعْمَىٰ وَٱلْأَصَمِّ وَٱلْبَصِيرِ وَٱلسَّمِيعِ هَلْ يَسْتَوِيَانِ مَثَلًا أَفَلَا تَذَكَّرُونَ
inna'lladhīna āmanū wa ʿamilū'l-ṣāliḥāti wa akhbatū ilā rabbihim ulāʾika aṣḥābu'l-janna, hum fīhā khālidūn · mathalu'l-farīqayni ka'l-aʿmā wa'l-aṣammi wa'l-baṣīri wa'l-samīʿ, hal yastawiyāni mathalā, a-fa-lā tadhakkarūn
"Those who believe, who do righteous deeds, and who humble themselves before their Lord — those are the people of the Garden; there they remain. · The likeness of the two parties is that of the blind and the deaf, and of the seeing and the hearing. Are the two alike as a likeness? Will you not then take heed?"
The original sense of the root خ-ب-ت is given by the lexicographers thus: khabt — low ground, a hollow, level land. A place that lies lower than what surrounds it.
| Derivative | Meaning |
|---|---|
| خَبْت | Low level ground, a hollow tract |
| أَخْبَتَ | He sank low, he bowed |
| مُخْبِت | One who bows, who yields from the heart |
The picture in the word is worth recording, and I give it as an observation about the language: submission is told here by way of a landform — ground lying lower than what is around it. And low ground has one property: water gathers there.
I record this connection as my own reading, and it is not binding; the verse draws no such conclusion. What is recorded is the concrete picture the root carries.
Mukhbit also occurs in the Qurʾān at al-Ḥajj 22/34-35 (wa bashshiri'l-mukhbitīn) and was treated in al-Ḥajj.
The twenty-fourth verse closes the first block with a likeness. And the likeness is built from four words:
| Faculty | Negative | Positive |
|---|---|---|
| Sight | al-aʿmā — the blind | al-baṣīr — the seeing |
| Hearing | al-aṣamm — the deaf | al-samīʿ — the hearing |
And the arrangement must be recorded: the two negatives first, the two positives after. The verse does not cross them as aʿmā–baṣīr, aṣamm–samīʿ; it lists the two lacks first and the two intact senses after.
A similar series was treated at Fāṭir 35/19-23 (blind–seeing, darknesses–light, shade–heat, the living–the dead). I rely on that treatment.
The difference here: in Fāṭir there were four separate pairs; here a single human being is described by two of his senses.
And the choice of these two senses ties back to the verse just before in the sūra: in the twentieth verse it was said mā kānū yastaṭīʿūna'l-samʿa wa mā kānū yubṣirūn — the same two senses. This is an overlap that can be verified from the text.
هَلْ يَسْتَوِيَانِ مَثَلًا — the question is in the dual (yastawiyāni), because what is compared is two groups, not four persons. This is a grammatical note.