نَبِّئْ عِبَادِىٓ أَنِّىٓ أَنَا ٱلْغَفُورُ ٱلرَّحِيمُ · وَأَنَّ عَذَابِى هُوَ ٱلْعَذَابُ ٱلْأَلِيمُ
"Inform My servants that I am the much-forgiving, the much-merciful · and that My punishment is the painful punishment."
The two verses are the two halves of a single sentence and are built symmetrically. But the symmetry is not complete — and the difference must be recorded:
| Verse 49 | Verse 50 | |
|---|---|---|
| Subject | The Essence — "I" | An attribute — "My punishment" |
| Structure | Annī ana al-Ghafūru'l-Raḥīm | Wa anna ʿadhābī huwa al-ʿadhābu'l-alīm |
| Number of elements | Two names (Ghafūr, Raḥīm) | One attribute (alīm) |
| The separating pronoun | Ana | Huwa |
| To what it is attached | Directly to God | To the punishment — a word comes in between |
The difference is this, and I record it as my own reading, its ground being the table: in the first sentence the predicate is attached directly to the Essence — "I am the forgiving." In the second sentence a word comes in between: the punishment. That is, it does not say "I am the one who punishes"; it says "My punishment is painful."
And while there are two names on the side of forgiveness, there is one attribute on the side of punishment.
The same balance was set up in the seventh verse of Sūrat Ibrāhīm within a conditional sentence, and four differences were set out in a table there. I rely on that treatment.
| Ibrāhīm 14/7 | al-Ḥijr 15/49-50 | |
|---|---|---|
| Structure | Two conditional sentences | Two declarative sentences |
| The positive side | La-azīdannakum — a verb, with the pronoun of the one addressed | Ana'l-Ghafūru'l-Raḥīm — two names |
| The negative side | Inna ʿadhābī la-shadīd | Wa anna ʿadhābī huwa'l-ʿadhābu'l-alīm |
| The shared element | ʿAdhābī — "My punishment" | ʿAdhābī — "My punishment" |
| The shared structure | On the positive side the doer is stated; on the negative side the quality of the punishment is named | The same |
In two sūras the same balance is set up in two different modes, and the shared element is the same word: ʿadhābī.
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the shared word order of the two texts: when the Qurʾān sets the two sides over against one another, it attaches forgiveness to the doer, and punishment not to an act but to an object. That is, "I forgive" and "My punishment is severe" do not stand on the same grammatical level. The same asymmetry is in both sūras; this is the repetition in two places of something that in a single verse could be counted a coincidence.
The ن-ب-أ root: important, new and profitable news. The root was analysed at al-Nabaʾ in connection with the name of that sūra, and the difference between nabaʾ and khabar was recorded there. I do not repeat it here.
And the verb will come once more two verses later in the sūra: wa nabbiʾhum ʿan ḍayfi Ibrāhīm (51). That is, the same command, one for two names and one for a story. I record this as an observation about the word order: immediately after giving the news of forgiveness and of punishment, the sūra begins to recount an event in which the two appear together — glad tidings for Abraham, destruction for the people of Lot.