Ibrāhīm 14:4

Wa mā arsalnā min rasūlin illā bi-lisāni qawmihi li-yubayyina lahum · Fa-yuḍillu'llāhu man yashāʾu wa yahdī man yashāʾ · Wa huwa'l-ʿAzīzu'l-Ḥakīm

"We sent no messenger except in the tongue of his own people, that he might make things clear to them. After that, God leads astray whom He wills and guides whom He wills. He is the Mighty, the Wise."

The sentence is built with a pattern of ḥaṣr (restriction): mā arsalnā… illā… — "We did not send, except on this condition." In Arabic this pattern conveys that the rule is without exception.

That is, the verse is not describing a practice; it is laying down a principle. Not for one messenger, but for every messenger sent.

The root ل-س-ن: tongue — both the organ in the mouth and the language spoken. English has the same overlap in the word tongue.

The construct lisānan ʿarabiyyan has been treated in two places in the series:

• At Fuṣṣilat 41/1-5, the Book's being described as qurʾānan ʿarabiyyan, and at 41/44 of the same sūra a counterfactual situation had been set up: wa law jaʿalnāhu qurʾānan aʿjamiyyan la-qālū law lā fuṣṣilat āyātuh — "had We made it a Qurʾān in a foreign tongue, they would have said, 'If only its verses had been set out in detail!'" The note there was this: the objection arises not from the content but from the attitude; whichever option had obtained, an objection fitted to it would have been found.
• At al-Zukhruf 43/3 the verb was analysed: innā jaʿalnāhu qurʾānan ʿarabiyyan — the verse does not say "We sent it down", it says jaʿala (to put a thing from one state into another). The note there: the verse speaks not of the Qurʾān's coming into being but of the form in which it was given.

I rely on both and do not repeat them.

What belongs here is this: in Fuṣṣilat and al-Zukhruf the subject was the tongue of this Book. Ibrāhīm 14/4 says the same thing not for a single book but for all who have been sent.

That is, the particular case in al-Zukhruf appears here as a general principle. Its being Arabic is not a privilege but the form that a rule takes for that particular hearer.

And the ground of the choice of tongue is stated plainly in the verse: li-yubayyina lahum — "that he might make things clear to them."

The root ب-ي-ن and tabyīn have been treated in many places in the series (in detail at al-Aḥqāf 46/7-8). The core of the root: the opening of a space between two things, an interval — and from there, becoming distinguishable. I do not repeat it here.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the clause of purpose itself: the verse presents language not as a matter of identity but as a matter of intelligibility. The tongue of the people is chosen because the aim is to be understood. Language is mentioned here not as a value but as an instrument — and the criterion by which the instrument is chosen is written out plainly.

And there is a conclusion that follows from this, and I give it too as my own reading: the first condition of conveying a message is to speak in the language the hearer understands. This is not "language" in the dictionary sense alone; vocabulary, the level of the concepts and the manner of address are within this principle as well. The verse does not say this — but the logic of the principle it lays down reaches this far, and I record it as an inference, not as the wording of the verse.

And here the sentence goes somewhere unexpected: guidance and going astray are mentioned after the intelligibility of the language has been secured.

I record it as an observation about the word order: the letter fāʾ conveys sequence — "and after this". That is, the verse first removes every excuse (the language is intelligible), and then says to whom the outcome belongs. Had the order of the two sentences been reversed, the sense would have been spoiled.

And the fourth verse of the sūra echoes the last two names of the first verse: al-ʿAzīzu'l-Ḥamīd (1) → al-ʿAzīzu'l-Ḥakīm (4). The shared name is al-ʿAzīz; the name that changes passes from praise to wisdom.